Castling
by muppet47
Summary: "She isn't here, Mr. Castle. Don't you want to protect her? Isn't that what all of this is about?"
1. Chapter 1

A/N – This is my entry into The Great Castle Angst Fest of 2012. It isn't funny AT ALL, but I hope you will read to the end of the chapter before you quit and/or decide to throw things at me.:) (And I'm a whole hour ahead of the countdown clock, ER.:)

Disclaimer – I do not own Castle.

* * *

Castling

* * *

_Dress, dress me down - I don't mind. Leave me to my insides.  
I don't need this lonely skin anymore.__ - The Narrative, Castling  
_

* * *

Chapter 1

* * *

Kate wakes in a tangle of sheets and sweat, her hair scratchy at her neck, her mouth dry. She lies still, wondering if she will have to run for the bathroom to be sick. Sometimes she does. She carefully breathes in through her nose and out her mouth, deliberately blanking her mind, forcing back the dreams.

It helps, not to think about the dreams; even the good ones, the ones where he's there. When it's a bad one – blood covering her hands and drenching her shirt, splattered in her hair, the smell strong and sharp – it's imperative that she doesn't. Think about it.

When she can't stop herself and instead goes over and over it in her mind, the repercussions are…

Well. It's bad.

Dr. Burke reminds her three times a week that there was nothing she could have done then, and reliving it now won't change anything. Kate sometimes wonders if Dr. Burke can't help but view her as his very own Sisyphean task; if it wearies him just to see her walk in the door. It just seems so pointless now.

Six weeks since it happened. Nothing, really. But long enough that anything before seems like an almost unbearably naïve and beautiful dream. Everyone tells her she needs to give it more time, but they forget that Kate has been through this before. She knows herself, and she will never be able to let this go, to go back to whatever normal had been before the accident.

The accident. That's what everyone calls it. She has no idea why. Murder isn't an accident.

Kate carefully climbs out of bed and pulls off her sweat drenched pajama shirt. She sways a little where she stands, her head pounding, but she's not going to be sick this time. The dream was a good one. She tries to block it out, but hints of it bleed through, the colors bright.

They are at the loft; he is making her scrambled eggs. She is standing on his side of the counter so she can be near him while he cooks, can lay a hand on his back or lean her cheek against his arm.

In the dream she crowds her body between his and the stove. Kate goes up on her toes to kiss his neck right where it meets his jaw and it's all _so real_. The tug of his arm against her back as he pulls her closer, the prickly sensation of his cheek against her fingers, his mouth warm and firm. Not like a dream, not even like a memory, but like she is there with him, _right there_, and it is everything else - the loss, the sinking loneliness - that is the dream. The nightmare.

She can see the steam coming off the eggs as Castle slides them onto her plate. The fork is smooth against her hand, the orange juice sweet and cool in her mouth. She teases him, _what about my coffee, Rick? _

And then everything changes, the angles go wrong. He turns to her, his face ashen, weary. _I'm sorry, Kate. God, I'm so sorry._ He reaches for her, draws her into his arms, so solid she can still feel them, can still smell his shirt, his neck.

All false, a trick. A lie, because Castle is dead, and she can't hug him or kiss his neck or breathe in the scent of his shirt, ever, ever.

Kate abruptly sits down hard on the edge of her bed, her shirt crumpled in her hand. The realization hits her again that he is gone, that she'll really never see him again. It is as incomprehensible and unbearable as it was the first time. And the second, and the third, and the tenth, and the two-hundred-and-twenty-seventh. It will never be okay. She will never be okay.

It's starting. The panic is rising up to choke her, to rip her apart and send her spinning with nothing to anchor her. To remind her there is nothing left.

She needs to get to the bathroom and take a pill before it's too late; before the grief descends upon her, dark and smothering, hot, leaving her to sob herself into insensibility, unable to move even to call for help.

Kate doesn't have the energy to worry about herself, but somewhere in the person she used to be she feels terrible for her friends. Her dad. If she doesn't go to work someone will come to find her. Esposito or Ryan will invent an excuse to call. Lanie and her dad won't bother with excuses and will stop by the moment they don't hear from her when they should.

She doesn't want them to find her; needs to spare them that. Kate feels guilty enough for the time with Esposito and the whiskey, and for letting Lanie discover her that morning three weeks ago. She was curled up and borderline unresponsive, her eyes nearly swollen shut, stomach muscles sore with sobbing and dry heaving. It would be unconscionably selfish to allow her dad see her like that.

It's happened more than that once, but only Kate and Dr. Burke know that.

That's why she agreed to the pills. Not to help herself, but to spare everyone else. There is no help for her.

Kate's supposed to see Dr. Burke tomorrow. To pretend to push the bolder up the hill, only to see it fall again.

She is never going to stop falling.

* * *

_I see signs now, all the time, that you're not dead, you're sleeping. I believe in anything that brings you back home to me. -Bloc Party, Signs_

* * *

**5 weeks earlier**

Castle comes to slowly, the blood sluggish in his veins. The drug haze never really lifts, but it isn't strong enough to completely subdue the dull ache of pain at his chest, his leg, the base of his skull.

He struggles toward wakefulness. It's a fight to shake his drug induced dreams, but knows he must. His thoughts are hazy, his reality nebulous and fragile. Time is always bending and twisting, with no markers in this stark white room to prove its passage. It would be so easy to sink into the dreams.

The dreams where he is home, whole and safe. With Alexis, his mother.

With Kate.

When he is awake the pain is so great he can barely think of them. At best they have no idea where he is. At worst they think he is dead. Sometimes Castle isn't sure he's not.

His memory isn't reliable. Castle has been trying to piece together how he came to be here in this white room, restrained to a cot, only shadowy figures with their needles and their questions to show that he isn't the only person in the world.

It seems forever since he's had a clear recollection of anything, and when he wakes he desperately dredges up the last thing he remembers, tries with his addled mind to sort through the details, to find some sense.

The last clear memory is of the ambulance. But it started in the warehouse. It seems like that's the beginning, but it can't be. The beginning stretches back too far to see, further even than a mother bleeding out in an alley.

His head aches. Concentrating, _thinking _makes it worse and Castle has to take a deep breath, force his mind to focus on what he knows. To try to link together the moments that brought him here, so far from Kate.

He and Kate were in a warehouse, and he remembers thinking that nothing good ever happens in a warehouse. Some shit was always going down. They knew the suspect was there. They saw him enter after an anonymous tip had them staking out the place for hours.

Castle trips over this point every time, the anonymous tip. Now it seems suspicious, but then it hadn't seemed that odd. The case was high profile. It had been on the news; they had received dozens of tips. This one was oddly specific, but someone had to know something, and at the time they had been grateful for what seemed like a break in the case.

Except it wasn't a break. It was a trap.

But in the memory that is slowly unspooling - each piece collected and fitted with the one before it - they didn't know that yet.

They weren't stupid. They did everything right. They called in their destination to Gates. Kate radioed for backup when they saw Councilman Bauchman enter the warehouse. For two hours no one else had gone in or out. They had no reason to believe it was an ambush.

It makes no difference. Castle knows Kate will believe it is her fault. Will think she should have seen from the beginning that what seemed like a case of petty political corruption - self contained, related to absolutely nothing - was actually the case engineered to bring them down, to get them safely out of the way for good.

But it seemed so easy. So routine.

Castle takes another careful breath. It's agonizing, but it means the drugs are wearing off. He can almost think is in a straight line, and the pieces of memory are coming faster now, bright and vivid. It's almost like he's there again.

* * *

**Another week earlier**

The warehouse is uncharacteristically open and bright, sunlight streaming in from the upper windows. The catwalk circling the walls under the windows is clear, as is the bare floor of the warehouse itself. Deserted, except for Councilman Bauchman, who stands at the other end, his back to the wall, eyes wide, hands in the air. So easy. A sitting duck.

Kate advances with her gun trained on him, calling to him that it is over, to keep his hands where she can see them. Castle is maybe three steps behind, just enough to give her space, but still close. Just in case.

They have just reached the middle of the warehouse. He is distracted by a beam of sunlight striking Kate's hair, by the dust motes sparkling in the golden halo that surrounds her, when the councilman shouts, "Don't shoot!" his voice echoing. Castle guesses they'll never know if he means Kate or if he has had a sudden last minute change of heart. Perhaps the councilman has realized a moment too late that he is expendable.

Or maybe it is just the signal, because immediately there is a flash and a boom, the sound bouncing and rebounding off the walls. Castle instinctively reaches to cover his ears. He sees Kate falter but never lower her gun, and then in his peripheral vision men are materializing out of nothing, melting out of the walls, dropping from the ceiling.

Before he can even turn his head there is a gunshot behind him. Blood blooms across the councilman's chest as he slowly folds to the ground, his eyes still wide. Kate shouts and starts to turn but abruptly crumples to the floor, limbs askew like a puppet with snipped strings. Castle grabs her arm as she falls and sees the dart in her neck. He has split second of relief - she's not shot - before he is grabbed from behind and roughly turned around.

He is facing a man all in black, including a ski mask. He is holding a gun, and while he roughly jerks him away from Kate –he hears her body slump to the floor – his manner is incongruously casual. "Hello, Mr. Castle. If you would just step away, please. We don't want anyone else to get hurt."

"What?" Castle's ears are still muffled and everything has taken on a frantic and surreal quality. His heart is pounding with adrenaline but his mind hasn't caught up, doesn't yet realize he is afraid. The dissonance, all of it so unexpected, and his mind is on pause, drawing a blank. It hasn't been thirty seconds. "What?"

The man steps back and nods in the direction of the door. Castle looks up just as he hears another shot, and another, right before a burning pain explodes in the right side of his chest, then in his left thigh. He drops to his knees, the impact sending another white hot flare of pain up and through him, bursting in his head with a bright flash that slowly fades to black.

The next thing he knows he is draped across Kate's lap. Her vest and his are on the floor, and she's pulled off her shirt to press against the hole in his chest. Her other hand is trying to hold his leg closed. His vision is tunneling and his hearing isn't working right because she sounds like she is a long way away.

"Castle!" She is sobbing, her voice hoarse and breaking. "You do not die, you are not allowed to die!" His blood is all over her, gruesome streaks across the bare skin of her torso, stark against the white of her bra, somehow in her hair. She leans over him, the sobs tearing out of her, sending waves of pain through him every time her body jerks against his.

"They're on their way, just hold on." He can barely understand her. "Oh god…Castle…Rick…_please._"

She tries to rest her head against his neck, but her right arm stretched to his thigh is putting her at a weird angle. Her face is wet against his throat and he can feel her lips moving against his collar bone as she alternately pleads and demands that he live.

Castle wants to reassure her but he can't focus, or hold onto any one thought. He can't seem to inhale properly, and he can't speak past his burning thirst. Terror hits him, because he's done enough research on how it feels to bleed to death to know what that means. His vision is slowly fading out, not to black, but to white, and he knows it's the blood loss, that he's almost gone.

With seconds left he focuses on Kate. He has to tell her…but he can't get any air to speak. He must have jerked with the effort to breathe because she raises her head, her face inches from his, her cheeks smeared with tears and blood.

"Castle?" Whatever she sees in his face makes her more frantic. "No! You can't, please God, they're almost here. Please Castle! _You promised!_"

She is almost hyperventilating, and he can't stand it, her distress, this nightmare coming true for her_ again_, …. .. . and he can't …..has to tell her… .. …_

_The memory twists and ripples and this time there is something new. He remembers coming to, blinking, trying to clear his vision; trying to think against the pull of the all encompassing pain because this is wrong, wrong._

"Hello again." It's the polite voice from the warehouse. But he's not in the warehouse.

"Try not to panic, please. We've given you some pain medication that should begin alleviating your discomfort momentarily."

Everything is burning searing tearing pain. _Kate._

"I'm afraid we had to transfuse you in the ambulance. You had us worried for a moment, Mr. Castle. Unfortunately we had to cut it a little close in there."

A man steps forward, still all in black. He checks something on one of the numerous machines and smiles at him jovially.

"It was touch and go, but you're going to make it. I'm sorry for the complications. We would have given you more medical attention at the site, stabilized your blood loss before the ambulance arrived, but your girlfriend proved rather impervious to our tranquilizers." He smiles conspiratorially, like Castle should share the joke. "That dart should have put her out for ten minutes at least. It barely held her for three. My guys had to scramble, really pull a Houdini to get out of there without her seeing them." He shakes his head. Whistles. "She's something else, I tell you what."

"Where is she?" It takes all that is left of him and still he barely makes a sound.

"You don't need to worry about Kate Beckett, Mr. Castle. She's fine. And will continue to be so, as long as we understand each other."

"_Where is she?" _

The man continues to smile but his eyes lose their warmth, his tone dropping the good-old-boy charm.

"She isn't here, Mr. Castle. Don't you want to protect her? Isn't that what all of this is about?"

He can't think, something…

The man in black pulls out a syringe and taps the side while another man dressed as a paramedic steps from behind him. Castle doesn't register the feel of the needle against his skin but it must have gone in, because he is whirling into darkness. The last thing he hears is the man black, suddenly loud against his ear. "This is what you agreed to. Believe me, Mr. Castle. It's for the best."

* * *

Alone in the white room Castle is suddenly struggling for air. A heart monitor is going crazy, the frantic beeping sure to bring a silent, blank-faced nurse armed with a syringe to send him swirling back to unconsciousness. He fights to take deep breaths, to slow his heart, because that can't happen, not now that he's remembered what happened.

Now that he's remembered why.

* * *

"_What would you do to save her?"_

"_Anything. I'll do anything."_

* * *

Thanks to Laura and Jessie, who talked me off the ledge with this one, and to Nic, who talked me off the ledge AND found my typos.:)_  
_

This is a departure from what I usually write, so I would love to hear what you think.:)


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

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_After - 6 weeks _

"You know it wasn't your fault."

It's not a question. Dr. Burke begins every session this way, with this affirmation that Kate does not hold herself responsible for Castle bleeding out while she lay unconscious mere feet from him. That she doesn't feel guilty that she has no memory of Castle being gunned down beside her. That the first thing she remembers is looking up from the floor to find her hand resting in a pool of his blood.

A fugue state. That's what they're going with. She watched Castle get shot, then returned fire to kill the councilman. The idea is that it had somehow proved too much and she had blacked out. Everyone agrees it couldn't have been more than three minutes, tops. Her distress call was recorded almost immediately after they radioed for backup.

Three minutes. Three minutes of Castle dying alone on the cold warehouse floor.

"There was nothing you could have done."

This is Dr. Burke checking to make sure she isn't replaying the aftermath in her head. Ascertaining that she doesn't feel at fault for the fact that he died in the ambulance, his blood loss so severe he never really had a chance. Blood that bubbled up against her fingers, resisting all her efforts to contain it, to hold it in. Her sobs, her hysterics and her pleas - all useless against the gush of his blood.

"You returned fire. You did everything you could."

Esposito put it differently, that incomprehensible afternoon. They weren't ten minutes down the road before he got the call that Castle hadn't made it. He hung up and pulled over, right on the highway.

He couldn't even get the words out, but Kate knew. Just looking at his face, she knew. Esposito ignored the tears dripping off his cheeks, keeping his hand on her arm as she stared straight ahead, silent and still, going into shock. "But you got the bastard, Beckett. You got the fucking bastard."

So he didn't get away with it. Councilman Bachman murdered Castle, and she shot him immediately. No loose ends. Not like her mom's case, at least. His murderer was safely dead. It might even be some comfort if she could remember doing it.

Kate leans her head back against the couch and stares at the point where the opposite wall meets the ceiling so she won't have to look at Dr. Burke while she lies to him. "I know."

Dr. Burke coughs, ruffles the papers in his lap. These days he has to bring notes to her appointments. He probably needs a flow chart to keep up with her traumas.

"Do you?"

Startled, Kate pulls her eyes from the ceiling molding to Dr. Burke. This is different. His eyes are narrow, shrewd, like he's spotted something new, something important, and Kate detects a frisson of anxiety deep beneath the layer of numbness in which she has swathed herself. She shrinks back in her chair.

"Of course." Kate will say whatever he wants.

"You still don't remember the shooting?"

"No." This time she isn't lying, and frustration edges her voice. Frustration that her messed up mind forgets the bullet hitting Castle, but retains the horror of his body across her legs, heavy and limp, the coppery tang of his blood in her nose. His eyes wide, frustrated, terrified, until they suddenly weren't anything.

"It's there. It will come back."

Dr. Burke sounds as he always does; calm and certain. She saw the councilman shoot Castle and returned fire, killing him instantly. The physical evidence proves it. It is just a matter of waiting for the memory to resurface. Dr. Burke believes that might help her get some closure.

"I don't think so." Kate speaks without thinking, because it isn't there. It just isn't. Dr. Burke doesn't know that she has dreamed that day every single night since it happened, and while she sometimes sees the councilman sliding down the wall, his eyes staring, she never, ever sees Castle get shot. Never has any awareness of it at all.

He is there behind her, a warm and steady presence at her back, and then in an instant, a blip, they are both on the floor surrounded by his blood. Her whole life destroyed in a moment she can't remember living.

But so what? Does she really want to remember the exact second her life turned into this nightmare? No matter what, he's still gone. Still dead.

Dr. Burke clears his throat. "Even if you never remember, there are other events that should help give you closure. They might be unpleasant to think about, but they should help you move on."

Kate drops her head and stares at her lap, just for a change of scenery. "Like what?" She realizes immediately that this is a mistake. She has indicated interest, invited response.

"Well." Dr. Burke shuffles his papers, clears his throat, and his uncharacteristic reticence causes Kate to lift her eyes from her lap. He is regarding her with a kindness that is as close to pity as he ever gets. "I know you don't want to think about it, but having identified the body is something that should help give you closure."

Kate stares at him for an unending moment. The very air seems suspended, frozen around her.

"I didn't ID his body." His body. The words hurt, are heavy and jagged in her mouth.

"You don't remember identifying the body?" Dr. Burke's voice is sharp, concerned.

"I don't remember it because I didn't do it." Kate swallows hard, tears suddenly thick in her throat. "I would remember that." She would never forget.

Dr. Burke is frowning, riffling through the papers in his hands. "It says right here that you identified the body for release."

"Why would I? I'm not…" Kate pauses, tries to work out the words. "I wasn't his next of kin. That's…that's Alexis." And God help her, but she resents her for it. But it's her fault. Her own fault.

Dr. Burke stares at her, outwardly calm, his eyes troubled. "My understanding is that Mr. Castle's daughter was out of town at the time of the accident. I don't think she would have been asked…"

"Martha, then." This conversation has to be over. The pictures in her head - Castle gray and still, his skin slack. "His mother."

"Kate." Dr. Burke's tone is just a hair too careful, too measured. "All of my paperwork indicates that you were the one to identify Mr. Castle's body."

"It's mistaken. There's some mistake." Kate can hear herself getting louder; can sense something that feels like desperation rising up, pushing against her cocoon of numbness, threatening to puncture it. She leaps to her feet.

Dr. Burke immediately sets the papers aside, abandons his questioning. "Kate, remember what we talked about. Just -"

She is past hearing him. "I didn't identify him. I never saw him…" Her voice hitches. "I never saw him again, after…" After his blood drained out of his body to surround her on the floor. After the life faded from his eyes while she watched, helpless. After he left her.

Dr. Burke slowly rises, his hands held out low, the way you would approach a wild animal. "Kate, I need you to take a deep breath. Remember? Just sit down and concentrate on breathing. Everything will be all right."

What a stupid thing to say. Kate lowers herself to the couch on unsteady legs, thinking only of breathing, in and out. Not of blood, sticky and bright and everywhere.

It's completely stupid.

Nothing will ever, ever be all right.

* * *

I'm a little nervous about this one since it is different for me, so thank you so much to everyone who has alerted and reviewed and let me know your thoughts. I really appreciate it - this is the best fandom. :)

And thanks again to Nic for the last minute proof read.:)


	3. Chapter 3

Castling – Chapter 3

* * *

_After, 6 weeks_

The air conditioning is turned up too high. Kate is shivering from the abrupt temperature contrast between the heat of the street and the icy chill of his building. That's what she is trying to tell herself, that she is physically uncomfortable, not that she is on the brink of a panic attack.

Six weeks. It's been six weeks since she was here last. It takes her two tries to get her thumb against the doorbell.

The door flies opened immediately, and Kate briefly imagines Martha standing on the other side, waiting for the doorbell. Waiting for her. Guilt twists her stomach.

"Kate." Martha somehow sounds both delighted and horrified. Her voice is brittle, and for the first time ever Kate thinks she looks old. She has obviously lost weight, the skin around her eyes and jaw noticeably more slack.

Kate hesitates on the threshold, recalling Martha as she last saw her, such a contrast to this tired woman before her.

Martha hadn't looked tired then, even though she'd been swanning in at seven in the morning after an all nighter - She'd been laughing, delighted that she'd caught Kate kissing Castle in the kitchen while they waited for their coffee to brew. She'd waggled her finger at them, her eyes twinkling as she brushed off Kate's flustered offer of coffee, and headed for her room, calling over her shoulder, "Please, do carry on."

Kate feels her breath coming shorter as the memory fills out, takes form. Castle had laughed at her, sworn her could see her blushing, and she had pretended to be annoyed right up until he crowded her against the counter, surrounding her. She could feel him along every nerve and had wanted nothing more than to call in late, but they had to follow up on a lead. A tip Esposito had just texted them. The anonymous tip that would lead them to the warehouse and the end of everything.

But of course that wasn't the last time she saw Martha. That would be the funeral.

Kate barely remembers seeing Martha that day. Her grief was so huge that she couldn't confront anyone else's. She really doesn't recall anything solid from the funeral at all, just some random impressions that soaked through her medicated haze.

Standing between her father and Esposito, their hands at her elbows.

The overwhelming number of people, as though all of New York had come to pay its final respects to Richard Castle.

Gina in the pew behind her, quietly sobbing through the whole thing.

Back at the loft while his lawyers went over the contents of his will. Sitting stiff and numb until they came to the part about the rights to Nikki Heat. That part she remembers. All left to her, and the information that fifty percent of the profits had been accruing in an account under her name for years; had been since Heat Wave, way back then, way before she was anything to him but a challenge.

She had bent at the waist, her arms wrapped around her stomach, her teeth gritted against the keening and the tears. It became clear at that moment - and every moment after – that it wasn't just the loss of him that was unbearable. It was the agony of her own stupidity in not recognizing the kind of man he was from the very beginning. They'd had so little time together, but they could have had _so much more_. Years, if only she hadn't been so stupid and afraid.

And for what? Her fears, her caution, didn't make this nightmare any easier. The worst had happened anyway, and she'd gained nothing but regrets and lost time.

Kate can see the expanse of the loft behind Martha, but her feet are rooted to the floor. This will be impossible if she's thinking about the funeral. About Castle. About how she has ignored his mother's phone calls and broken every promise to look after Alexis. She won't be able to get through this if she thinks about how disappointed he would be that she has completely and selfishly fallen apart.

It makes her furious. With herself, but also with Castle for dying when they all need him so much. Kate quite literally can't bear it, the knowledge that she isn't the person he thought she was.

Because she isn't. Castle thought she was someone strong, admirable. A survivor.

Ridiculous. Kate always knew she would never survive the loss of him.

* * *

_After - 6 weeks_

"Mr. Castle. Good news! You're going to live."

Castle stares straight ahead as the man in black strolls into the room and tosses himself into the chair by the bed.

Six weeks. Six weeks of almost total silence except when _he_ appears. Then Castle wishes for silence. Wishes he could unhear the ridiculous suggestions, the insane demands. Could close his ears to the impossible choice before him.

"Still not talking to me, Mr. Castle?" The man in black clicks his tongue. "I really feel that at this point it is just rudeness on your part." He sighs, his face a study in disappointment.

Castle grits his teeth and lifts his arm so that the cuffs securing him to the bed frame are pulled taut. "Perhaps I'm just uncomfortable because you have me at a disadvantage."

"I have apologized for that, Mr. Castle. It is a regrettable necessity."

Castle drops his arm and faces front. He concentrates on the pain radiating from the half-healed hole in his chest and tries to ignore the man beside him. His gut twists with the effort, but he can't let the man get to him.

"You talk to the nurse. That has to be frustrating, since she is not allowed to talk back. I can answer your questions."

Castle stares ahead, his eyes fixed on the blank white wall. He knows what is next.

"You talk in your dreams."

He closes his eyes, braces himself…

"You talk about Kate."

Every time. Every time he hears her name it's like being shot all over again. His body jerks as if with impact, waves of pain undulating from his leg, his chest, making his eyes water. Castle tries to focus on the physical pain to block out the man next to him. It never works. The absence of Kate, the agony of worry, aches worse than any bullet hole.

Out of the corner of his eye Castle can see the man in black shifting, leaning forward in his chair, his elbows propped on his knees. "I must say I'm surprised, Mr. Castle. In your dreams you speak as though you love her. And yet you won't do what we ask. You won't help her."

"_Help _her?" the words burst out before Castle can stop them. He is still too confused, too discombobulated from pain and drugs to navigate this twisted maze, but he knows he has to control himself. He can't fail her again.

The man in black continues as though Castle hasn't spoken. "I hear she isn't doing so well." His voice is sorrowful, the sinister undercurrent of hateful glee almost imperceptible. "She's been put on desk duty at work. She barely leaves her apartment." He pauses. "I think she's been drinking."

Blow after blow, again and again, every word agony. Castle can feel his tenuous control slipping as images of Kate fill his mind. Kate, alone and lost with no one to pull her from the edge of the rabbit hole, the edge of destruction. This is what he's done to her.

"Honestly, if she's just going fall apart like this we might as well have killed her."

Castle freezes as the edges of his vision blacken with rage, with fear, with desperation at his utter helplessness. Then he starts forward, yanking against the cuffs, the pain shooting throughout his body barely noticeable. "You _asshole-_ "

"Please." The man in black tips his head graciously. Smiles. "We've discussed this. Call me Mr. Turk."

"Why _not_ just kill her?" His stomach turns and threatens to heave at the very suggestion, but he has to know. "Why not just kill us both?"

Turk sits back in his chair, his posture opened, easy, but his eyes are suddenly hard. "Where's the fun in that? Kate Beckett has caused me a lot of trouble. Maybe I like watching her fall apart."

Castle can't even speak, tears and despair clogging his throat, blurring is vision. Nothing makes any sense. It's hopeless. This man is crazy, dark and twisted, and there is no way to predict what he will do.

"Besides." Turk is abruptly brisk and practical again. "We've been over this. Kate Beckett is still somewhat protected, enough that killing her outright is undesirable." He waves his hand in the air, as though he is dismissing something unpleasant. "I really would rather not, Mr. Castle. You know what you need to do. What you agreed to do."

He's going to suffocate, the white walls pushing in on him from every side. Trapping him. Leaving Kate at the mercy of this monster. "I never agreed to this! This wasn't the deal!"

Turk flicks his eyes like he is trying for patience. "Mr. Castle, I believe your exact words were, 'I'll do anything.'"

"Anything to protect her! I won't do _this_! I won't!"

"I think that you will." Mr. Turk is holding something out, has produced it out of thin air like a conjurer. At the sight of it Castle can feel the fight draining out of him. He starts to tremble as cold terror rushes in to take its place.

"What's this?" But he knows what it is. Little wooden elephants all in a line, trunk to tail, tail to trunk. It had reclaimed its place on Kate's desk at the precinct the day she was reinstated. She loves those elephants.

These assholes have been in the precinct. They've been close enough to…bile hits the back of his throat and he swallows convulsively, trying to reveal nothing.

"Just a friendly reminder." Turk idly twirls the elephants like a baton before gently setting them on the table by the bed. He runs a finger across their backs before he glances up, the look in his eyes at odds with his tone. "We can get to her whenever – wherever – we want."

Kate. Oh, god.

"We need your cooperation, Mr. Castle, and I suggest that you give it to us. You can't win this."

In one fluid motion Turk is up and out the door, gone as abruptly as he arrived. As soon as he is alone Castle reaches out with his free hand. His fingers tremble as they close around the little string of elephants. He stokes the cool, smooth wood with his thumb, tries to imagine it warm from her touch.

His heart pulses into his throat to choke him. He can barely breathe against the knot of tears as he lifts the elephants, presses them to his forehead .

Kate.

He has already lost.

* * *

"Kate?" Martha is standing to the side, still waiting for her to walk in the door. It's all she can do to move, to step over the threshold, and when she does she is hit so hard with tragic nostalgia that she can barely stay on her feet.

The colors, the smell, the very quality of the light. It's all exactly the same, and Kate doesn't know if she can stand it.

"Come in, sit down." Martha leads the way to the couches. She is as impeccably turned out as always, but something about her gait, the set of her shoulders, reminds Kate that she isn't the only one who lost him. It should make her feel less alone. It makes her feel worse.

Kate can't sit on the couch, the huge leather couch where she and Castle –

Instead she sits, upright and stiff, on the edge of one of the lounge chairs. Martha appraises her from across the coffee table.

"Kate, darling." Her eyes rake over her, her concern naked. "You look awful. You're way too thin."

Kate can feel herself shrinking back into the chair. She knows this; knows that she has dropped ten pounds she didn't have to lose. Knows that her hair is dull, her skin sallow from lack of real sleep and not enough food. She just doesn't know that it matters.

When Kate doesn't say anything Martha sighs and leans forward, her hands clasped. "Richard would hate this. It would kill him to see you like this."

Oh. Kate covers her face with her hand. This is why she hasn't come. The tears are burning her eyes and her voice is blocked and…

Kate flinches at the hand on her shoulder. Martha is suddenly standing beside her. "Kate. Sweetheart." She lifts her hand from Kate's shoulder and runs it over her head, smoothing her hair, and then Kate can't stop the tears that are running down her face, the confession tearing itself from her throat.

"He would be so ashamed of me."

"Oh, honey." Martha kneels beside Kate's chair and wraps her arms around her shoulders, pulling her down until Kate is silently crying into the crook of her neck. "He never, never would."

It feels better than she deserves, this absolution from Martha. Kate pretends that she believes her, and the momentary relief from the weight of shame and guilt is so great that it makes her lightheaded.

Martha is still hugging her, the warmth of her concern soaking into her skin, brushing against her protective haze. Kate hasn't been touched in so long that it's almost too much. Martha's hands are so gentle in her hair that it's about to pull her apart.

Kate manages to stop crying by gritting her teeth and breathing through her nose, a technique that has almost become second nature. After a minute Martha leans back, her eyes gentle, her hand rubbing soothing circles against Kate's shoulder.

"Why are you here, Kate?"

Kate swallows, everything in her shying from what she has to do. But.

She's never been able to stand loose ends. The loose ends, the unanswered questions, that's what makes you crazy. And a piece of paper in Dr. Burke's hand with her name on it as the person who identified Castle's body is a hell of a loose end. Because it wasn't her.

Kate can't stop thinking about it, wondering who it was. Who stood over his body, _his dead body_ and confirmed that it was really Castle, that it was really over. Can't stop imagining when the sheet was pulled back and - Her stomach lurches. Kate can't bear to think about it, but until she knows, she can't _stop_ thinking about it.

So. Here she is.

Her throat is narrowing, getting tight. Kate tries to slowly pull in air, to focus. She doesn't want to hurt Martha, but she has to know or she really will go crazy. Has to know if she is _already _crazy_._

"Martha, I'm sorry, I..." The words feel huge, hurtful. "You…you were the one to identify Castle's body. Right?" Breathe. It's almost over. Just verify that it was Martha, and she can stop thinking about this. Can stop obsessing about why her name is on the paperwork when she knows, _she knows_ it wasn't her.

Except Martha sags back from the waist like she's been punched in the gut, her arms dropping away from Kate. "What?"

Kate shivers, but not with the cold. Forces herself to say it again. "The paperwork…" Something snags in her throat and she has to pause, close her eyes so she can't see Martha's face. "Dr. Burke has some paperwork that indicates that I identified Castle's….that I ID'd the body." Kate is shaking all over now. "And I didn't." She opens her eyes. "It was you?"

But Martha is just staring, her arms hanging limply at her sides, her face bleached of color. Kate knows before Martha even opens her mouth.

"Kate. Honey. No."

Kate drops her eyes and holds up her hand to stop her, to delay the inevitable. "Alexis?"

"No." Kate is expecting pity, but Martha just sounds baffled. "They told us it was you, Kate. That you had identified him." She steps closer, and Kate can see that her eyes are unfocused, confused, and she hates that she is doing this, but she can't stop now.

"It wasn't you? Or Alexis?" Kate realizes she is on her feet, her fingers wrapped around Martha's wrist. She can feel Martha's pulse, too fast, racing against her thumb.

Martha shakes her head. "They said it was you."

"Martha, it wasn't." Kate is shaking, her hand squeezing Martha's skin, and for the first time since _before_ she feels sure of something. "It wasn't me."

Martha is totally still, her eyes huge, scared. "But what does that mean?" She doesn't try to pull away, even though Kate has to be cutting off her circulation. "What could have happened?"

_There's always a story._

With no warning the thought appears, and for a split second, _half an instant_, she remembers who she was. Who _Castle_ was, and how this, _this mystery_, would have intrigued him. He would have had three theories by now, at least one involving the CIA.

And then her stomach drops and the tears rush to her eyes and she knows again again again that Castle will never be intrigued by anything. Remembers that the Kate who Castle loved is gone forever.

It's probably nothing, anyway. A paperwork snafu.

Still.

He would never have let this go.

She and Martha are still locked together in the middle of the living room, Martha's eyes on hers, hurt and confused. All at once Kate sees her not as a reminder of her own failure, but as the family member of a victim who is searching for answers.

Martha_, Castle's mother_, is looking to her for answers and something in Kate shifts. For the first time in weeks she catches a glimpse outside her own grief.

Kate has no answers. None. Life is capricious and unfair and she can't see the meaning in anything, but maybe she can resolve this one question. For Martha. Alexis. For Castle.

"I don't know what happened. I don't know." Her voice catches. Kate clears her throat. "But I'll find out."

* * *

A/N – Good grief, you guys. This one took a village. HUGE thanks to Laura, Jessie and Nic, all of whom listened to my copious and unattractive whining, figured out what I was doing wrong, and fixed stuff.:)

And thanks again to everyone who has reviewed, alerted, etc. You guys are awesome, too.:)


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

* * *

Kate leans over her desk, her head in her hands, and focuses on her breathing. In and out, slow and steady, but it doesn't stop the images of Castle in her head. Castle bleeding out, Castle in the ambulance, Castle…_Oh God_…Castle on the autopsy table.

She can feel the panic curling in her gut, waiting to overtake her, but she can't succumb. Not now, not when nothing is making any sense at all.

She tries to block out the cacophony of the bullpen and do that stupid thing that Dr. Burke always suggests, to blank her mind, to think of nothing. It's never worked before, but she has to do something. She can't run to the bathroom, not with Ryan glancing at her with worried eyes every few seconds as he hangs up his coat. A pill would help, but she can't cloud her mind when she needs to be totally present to figure out what the hell is going on.

It doesn't make sense. Her elbows are resting on what seems to be at least fifty papers. Reports and documents and certificates, all of which confirm that Kate Beckett identified Richard Castle's body. That in lieu of an available family member, and so as not to prolong the ordeal, the victim's mother had given permission for Detective Kate Beckett, as a close family friend, to facilitate the quick release of his body for cremation.

It's ridiculous. It's probably not even legal, and Kate has spent over an hour at her desk –her mouth dry, her heartbeat erratic - staring at the reports, trying to decide if she's crazy.

"Beckett? You okay?"

Esposito appears beside her desk out of nowhere and Kate startles hard, rearing back in her seat and slamming her knee against her desk. When did he get here? Kate glances at the wall clock. It's already eight fifteen. She's been here for almost three hours.

"Hey, shit, Beckett. I'm sorry." Esposito glances at Castle's chair before reaching around to grab his desk chair and wheel it over beside her. He lays his hand on her shoulder. "I didn't mean to scare you."

"You didn't...I…um." God, her knee hurts like hell – right on the kneecap - but it gives her an excuse not to look at him. She thought she'd be finished before he got here. She can't think, she's not sure she should –

Esposito leans over and picks up one of the papers strewn across her desk. "What's all this?" Too late.

He skims the paper in his hand and reaches for another. Concern flashes across his face. "Why are you looking at these?"

Kate swallows and pushes her hair back. It's wild around her face, still a little damp from her shower. She's not positive she brushed it this morning. She's been at the precinct since five thirty. She inhales and hopes she can get the words out without wavering. "There's a problem."

"What kind of problem?" Esposito takes her in, her hair, her faded jeans, the hoodie with the hole in the elbow. Her sneakers. Kate knows he is noticing that she is pale and shaky, her eyes red rimmed, and she can practically see his brain working as he tries to decide how to handle this. How to handle her.

Kate gestures to the papers in his hand. "I'm not sure what…but the paper work about Castle's autopsy, the release of his body?"

"Yeah?" Esposito is frowning at her, wary.

"It all says I identified his body, Castle's body- "Her voice breaks and Kate has to take a breath before she can continue. "Espo, it wasn't me." It _wasn't._

Esposito sits back, surprised. "What?"

"It wasn't." Okay, better. Some distant part of her is pleased that she doesn't sound defensive, that she's keeping the panic under control.

"Oh shit." Esposito looks stunned, like he doesn't know what to do. Like he doesn't know what _she's_ going to do. "Look, Beckett that's got to be some kind of mistake." Esposito reaches for another report and frowns at what he sees. "God, what a fuck up. This is ridiculous."

"Ridiculous?" Something in her gut loosens a fraction, something hard and tight that she hadn't even realized was there. "You think it's a mistake?"

His eyes shoot to hers, surprised, "Of course it's a mistake. You were with me the whole time that day. You didn't…you were with me."

Kate sags in relief, blinking back the sudden moisture at the corner of her eyes. She was with Esposito. It couldn't have been her.

She's said it so many times now, to Dr. Burke, to Martha, to herself, over and over, _not me, not me_, that this one fact, _this one_, feels as true and solid as anything she has ever known, and if she's wrong then she really is crazy.

But Espo doesn't think it was her.

Kate would never have forgotten that. Never have forgotten Castle still and cold, another corpse on a table, gone, snuffed out. She can't even imagine it without shaking, without feeling like she's going to vomit, but that's not why she knows she would have remembered.

It would have been a chance to say goodbye.

God, don't cry.

Esposito is flipping through the papers slowly, glancing at her every few seconds. "I don't get it. Why the hell would they think it was you and not Martha?"

Kate braces herself. "But it wasn't Martha. Remember, she and Alexis were in California?" She leans in to find the paper she needs, points. "See? This says the body was released by 9 a.m. the next day. Martha and Alexis weren't even back by then."

Esposito picks up another paper. "There's a screw up with the time. Martha or Alexis – "

"No." Kate shakes her head decisively. "I talked to Martha. It wasn't her, and it wasn't Alexis."

Esposito looks up swiftly. "You talked to Martha?" He can't hide his shock. "When?"

"Yesterday." Kate swallows against the bitter taste of guilt coating her tongue, the back of her throat; ignores the flutter of panic against her ribs.

Esposito is just staring at her.

"What?"

"Nothing." He shakes his head. He almost looks like he's seen a ghost. "You just…you're okay?"

"Yes." She can do this. Has to do this.

"Okay." Esposito says slowly, like he's unsure if he wants to proceed. "Do you want me to talk to the M.E., the one who released the body?" He squints at the paper in his hand. "Rabinski?"

"He retired three weeks ago."

Esposito squints. "How do you know that?"

"I…I pulled his file."

"This morning? Jesus, Beckett, how long have you been here?"

Kate wishes she had on something besides her jeans and hoodie. That she had taken the time to dry her hair. "A couple hours." She stares at the top of her desk.

Esposito is quiet for several seconds. "Okay." He finally says, his voice gentle. "Why don't you go home, get some rest. I'll call Rabinski's house, figure out what happened."

Kate shakes her head. She's been resting for weeks. "I already called. His daughter answered. Said her parents were out of the country on an extended retirement trip and sabbatical. They won't be back for 6 months."

"You called his house." Esposito wraps his hand around the back of his neck. "You called his house this morning." His voice is carefully blank. "Was the daughter even awake yet?"

Kate shrugs. She still can't look up. Now that he mentions it the girl did sound husky and confused, but at the time all Kate had noticed was that she wasn't getting answers, only more questions.

But of course it was too early to call.

Esposito tries to hide it but she hears him sigh. "Look. Don't you worry about this. I'll ask around, figure out who else was on duty that day. I'll get it straightened out."

Kate knows what he's trying to do, how he's trying to protect her, but this isn't – he doesn't understand. She looks up at him, shakes her head. "I already tried. There was some sort of technical glitch with the personnel system and the duty roster for that whole week is missing."

Esposito frowns, reluctant, but he reaches for another report. "That's…that's really weird, actually."

"Right? Too many coincidences, too many loose ends."

"No." Esposito reaches out and snags her wrist, suddenly intent, as if he's just realized where she's going with this. And with a start it hits Kate as well, what she's been doing, what this might mean - "No, it's just a paperwork screw-up."

Kate has to look away from the pity that slips across his features, has to breath against the disappointment squeezing her chest. He doesn't understand. For a brief moment things were almost like a hint of before, until Espo remembered that she had fallen apart.

She lost more than Castle that day.

Still.

"You don't think it means something? That I don't know who identified Castle's body for release? That I have _no idea_ who saw him last and I can't find anyone who can tell me who it was?" Her voice is rising, her ribs pressing against her lungs. Abruptly the panic is threatening and _this_ is why she hasn't been able to do this, why Esposito isn't taking her seriously, why he is leaning into her, grabbing her shoulders. God. _Castle_. "You think it means nothing?"

"I think you need to not get upset."

No. No. She needs to not wonder, she needs to know why. Kate squeezes her eyes shut, forces her throat to unstick, to pull in air. She has to be calm; he can't try to stop her. "Maybe someone who was in the ambulance, a paramedic, will remember who was on duty."

Esposito gives her a little shake. "That's a total long shot, and Beckett, I don't think you should be…"

"This shouldn't have happened!" The words burst out. "I shouldn't have _allowed_ it to happen! I shouldn't have let them separate us. If I'd been in the ambulance with him - "

"No." Esposito interrupts her, insistent, firm. "No, Beckett. We've already talked about this."

Kate drops her eyes, can feel her face getting hot. She knows he is remembering that night a few weeks ago, but that was _different_. This is about case abnormalities, about that fact that no one seems to know what happened, and that night…

Kate has to cough and turn her head, hoping Esposito doesn't notice that her eyes are suddenly wet. Doesn't hear the sob that catches in her throat.

God, if only she'd been allowed in the ambulance with him. Kate feels her chest tighten, her eyes stinging, and she keeps her head averted from Esposito, staring fixedly at her desk.

Kate knows it's stupid, but she can't help but believe that if she just could have been there, if somehow Castle had heard her, then maybe he could've held on.

She'd said that, not to Dr. Burke, but to Esposito. It was several weeks back, the night it was his turn to check on her and he'd found her so drunk that she saw two of him walk through her front door.

Kate has only the vaguest memory of his warmth beside her, his shoulder against hers as they sat on the floor of her kitchen and leaned against the sink cabinet. He'd gently pulled the whisky bottle out of her hands as he listened to her choke out everything she'd done wrong, every way in which she'd failed Castle.

"They told us he was almost gone as soon as the paramedics got there. You know that." Esposito was patient and kind and unflinching. "You aren't magic. Your mere presence couldn't have saved him." He'd gently touched her wrist. "This isn't like you."

She'd been so drunk that every filter was gone. So submerged in grief that she had no sense of herself and what she would or wouldn't do.

"But," she was crying, her words garbled with snot and tears and hopelessness. She had no idea how Esposito understood anything she said, "He was in the ambulance with me when I was shot, and I…" Lived.

"Do you remember him there? Did you even know he was with you in the ambulance until he told you?"

Kate tried to wipe her eyes but could barely find her face. She didn't. Remember him. She remembered nothing after he told her he loved her. Kate felt her stomach jerk, revolt, and she was almost sick right there on the floor because -

"I didn't tell him I loved him." Kate bent over, her head on her knees, trying to keep the quarter bottle of whiskey down. "Before they took him. I didn't tell him."

Esposito didn't hesitate. "Castle knew you loved him."

"But maybe that's why. Maybe that's why he couldn't hold on. I just…" Everything went so fast. It was chaos, and when Kate realized that it was _really happening_ she was too busy demanding that he live to tell him she loved him and kiss him goodbye.

"Beckett." Esposito laid his hand, solid and warm, in the center of her back. He leaned over so his voice was in her ear. "Listen to me. Castle couldn't hold on because a selfish son-of-a-bitch tried to save himself by filling Castle with bullets. Castle couldn't hold on because he'd lost too much blood. If he could have stayed he would. He never would've left you."

Her breathing had gone shallow – she couldn't get enough air and there were spots in front of her eyes. "But he was alone."

"You were the last thing he saw, his final memory. I think he probably counted himself lucky."

Everything goes blurry after that. Whatever Esposito said is lost to her panic attack and her alcoholic haze, but she knows whatever he said didn't make any difference.

Castle wasn't lucky. He was dead, and she'd done nothing but fall apart.

Now Esposito leans closer, his hand on her arm. "Listen, I see it, I do. This is fucked up, but it's probably nothing. Just a weird paperwork snafu. There's no conspiracy here, Beckett."

"I never said there was." Her face is flushing and her chest is heaving and there's a new kind of tightness in her chest. It's not panic it's…_anger_.

Anger at the the paramedics who let Castle die, at the ME who screwed up and then went on vacation. At Esposito for dismissing it, for his constant concern and pity. At herself, for putting Esposito in a position to doubt her.

At herself again, again, _always,_ for being so unbearably weak, for doing so much better by hundreds of strangers than she had done by Castle. The whole investigation is botched and she didn't make sure it wasn't.

Maybe she can't figure it out. Maybe she is crazy, but this should be over. One phone call to clarify how her name got on the documents, and she should have been able to go back to drifting through what was left of her life. Instead it's a puzzle, each abnormality leading to another, nothing connecting.

"I need to find out who was in the ambulance with him."

"Beckett, this is a bad idea. I'll call around if you want, but I think you need to stop."

"He wouldn't stop."

Esposito drops his hands, sits back in his chair. He isn't meeting her eyes.

Kate takes a deep breath, surprised to find that she can. "If it were me…" _Why hadn't it been her?_ "If it were me, he wouldn't stop. He would never walk away."

Her voice is loud in her ears, unfamiliar. It takes Kate a second to realize why.

It's because she sounds like herself.

* * *

A/N - Thanks as usual to Jessie, who had to listen to a truly SPECTACULAR amount of whining, and to Laura and Nic and Julie, for reading and fixing, and for general keeping me off the ledge. Seriously, I'm ridiculous.

And thanks so, so much to everyone who has reviewed, and pm'd me and contacted me on Tumblr/Twitter. I'm sorry there was such a wait between updates, but hopefully this is back on track, and I haven't lost you guys with the delay. You all rock.:)


	5. Chapter 5

_After, 7 weeks_

"You believe the investigation into the circumstances of Mr. Castle's death was mishandled."

It's not a question. Dr. Burke never asks questions anymore.

Kate forces herself to stop beating her heel against the edge of the couch; to sit still and try to pay attention. Attempts to quit questioning why she is here when she should be at the precinct trying to find someone, _anyone _who knows anything.

She would have cancelled today's meeting with Dr. Burke, but grief counseling sessions are required when an officer discharges his or her weapon with a resulting fatality. Extra sessions are required when your lover bleeds out in your arms.

Dr. Burke is as even and calm as ever, but her eyes are fixed on his and she sees – believes she sees - the incredulity ghost across his face before he can school his features into their habitual mask.

There's something hot and tense in her abdomen, a knot that pulls tighter and tighter every time someone – Esposito, Ryan, Dr Burke – doesn't believe her. Doesn't _see_.

Before Kate knows it she's off the couch, pacing back and forth, about to jump out of her skin. "It wasn't handled at all. All the information is incorrect, incomplete." She stops and stares at Burke, defiant, her heart thumping in her throat. "It's almost like it's deliberate."

"Kate." Dr Burke drops his notes in his lap, leans forward. "This is counterproductive, Kate."

"It's not counterproductive to find out what happened to Castle."

"You know what happened." His voice is uncharacteristically firm. "I understand that there are some paperwork mistakes, some gaps in information, but people make mistakes. Drawing this out, making it into something it's not - it won't help you."

"Maybe I'm making it into something it is."

Burke stops. He leans back and regards her in silence for several seconds. When he speaks his tone has lost its edge. He's almost sorrowful. "This isn't your mother's case, Kate."

"What?" The words are like a smack. Her head actually snaps back. No. She can't think about her mother while she is thinking about Castle, can't revisit every loss at once, can't face how very alone she is.

Burke sighs. "This differs from your mother's case. Maybe that's hard for you."

Kate almost has to bend over; the knot is her stomach is so tight it's burning. She drops back to the couch. "I don't know what you mean." She sounds breathy. Insubstantial. "This isn't about my mother."

"Not knowing the why of what happened to your mother was devastating. It denied you closure, kept you from moving on." Dr Burke pauses, the silence heavy. "But it also kept you from having to ever really let her go."

Kate is on her feet before she even realizes it, the burning moving to her chest, her throat. Flushing across her face. This is…no, if he won't even listen -

"I'm not…I'm not making this up to hold on to Castle." Kate won't let it be a question. "I'm not."

She's out the door before Dr. Burke can even turn around, in her car without even knowing how she got there. Her hands are shaking, but she'll stop them. She's not going to fall apart, not if she has to do this alone.

Dr. Burke is wrong. Kate doesn't need this to hold onto Castle. She has no idea how to let him go.

She's doing this because she failed him.

She's doing this.

* * *

_After 7 weeks_

He's dreaming.

Castle knows it's all a product of his still-feverish mind, but it doesn't make the horror any less. Even in his unconsciousness he is trembling, a pit in his gut at the inevitability of how it all ends. There's nothing he can do.

_He is in Kate's apartment, staring at a murder board. Not her murder board, the one she showed only to him. Not the one she can close away, hide behind the shutters. _

_His. His murder board._

_It's mounted in the middle of her living room, somehow suspended from the ceiling. A huge smart screen, like Agent Shaw's. See-through, interactive, and surrounding him. On every surface, whichever way he looks, he sees her face – Kate Beckett – with all lines of investigation leading to her. It makes his nausea worse, and that's before he hears the door opening._

_Of course it's Kate. She stands still, staring, and Castle watches her expression slide from shock to outrage in almost an instant. She turns to him, beautiful. Heartbreakingly furious. _

"_I knew it." She is full of derision, but her eyes are brimming with tears._

_Castle leaps forward, grabbing her by the wrist before she makes a move to leave, desperate to defend himself, to explain the very foundation of his every motive. "I love you."_

_Kate shakes her head, slips her arm out of his grasp. "Maybe you think you do. But look what you've done to me."_

_Suddenly she is gaunt, her face leeched of color. Her eyes are unseeing, a bright splash of red spreading across her chest. He looks around desperate for help, and sees that all around him, on every board, every picture of Kate is circled with a bulls eye._

_Castle starts forward and falls into her, knocking them both to a stretch of ground beneath a beautiful sky. The angle of the light, all that gorgeous blue – it turns his stomach, ratchets up his fear until he is nearly frantic, and he clutches her against him, his hand in her hair. "I am a good man."_

_In an instant Kate has carefully disentangled herself. She slides back, staring ahead blankly. Her blood is running down her chest, faster, snaking rivulets of red soaking into the green, green grass all around her. "A good man wouldn't do this." _

Castle starts awake, gasping, his lungs pinched shut. The steady burning in his chest and the vision of a bleeding Kate won't let him breathe and he doesn't know what to do. Every choice is wrong.

Anything he does will hurt her, and he'll never be able to set it right.

Castle turns his head and isn't surprised to see Turk in the chair by the bed, silently watching.

They stare each other for a moment before Turk cocks his head, laces his fingers in his lap. "Time grows short Mr. Castle." He frowns, momentarily seeming honestly confused. "I don't understand. I believed you would be grateful for this opportunity. You cooperate and we don't kill her."

"No. You won't kill her." Castle swallows, his voice raspy, his throat raw. He wonders if he was screaming in his sleep. "You just want me to set her up, destroy her career. Make her think she's crazy. Leave her with nothing at all."

"Oh, the drama." Turk rolls his eyes. "She'll be alive, Mr. Castle. That's what you said you wanted."

"Completely discredited and alone? That's not a life!"

"Come on, now. Don't be so negative." Turk clicks his tongue. Castle wants to rip it out. "Yes, Detective Beckett is having a hard time right now, but I'm sure she'll move past it."

"Move past it?" Castle knows he is playing into Turks manipulation, but can't stop himself. "Move _past it_?"

Turk shrugs. "She accepts that you're dead. Sooner or later she'll have to move on." He laughs. "Really, shooting you in front of her was genius - she completely bought it. _And_ it made her a little crazy."

Turk points a finger at him, all rueful joviality. "And let me tell you, we're lucky because, frankly, my guys didn't do their best job. Anyone who really cared would see that there was something fishy about your death. But she sees nothing."

He sends Castle a sideways glance. "Strange, that she spent so many years obsessing over her mother's death, while with yours…well. Like I said, I'm sure she'll get over it. Didn't you leave her a bajillion dollars? She doesn't even need to work."

Castle involuntarily yanks against the handcuffs holding him to the bed rail. If Turk were half a foot closer he would reach out with his other hand, grab him by the throat. Pull him down until Castle could trap his neck between the bed rail and the chain of the cuffs. Pull tighter and tighter until Turk's eyes were bugging out and his tongue lolling and he _shut the fuck up_.

Instead he grits his teeth; tries not to give Turk the satisfaction, to let him see the full extent of his desperation. "She could go to jail."

"Then she would be alive in jail. Honestly, Mr. Castle, this is getting ridiculous. You're nearly out of time."

"You're just going to kill me anyway."

"Probably." Turk leans back, one ankle casually resting on the other knee. "I thought it was worth it to you? Your life for hers."

It is.

But not like this.

* * *

_After, 7 weeks_

"Um, I don't remember. Sorry." Carl, the ferrety little paramedic, shifts on the break room couch, his eyes never meeting hers.

Kate takes a deep breath through her nose and grits her teeth. It's a very good thing that she has not yet been cleared to carry her weapon or swear to God she would've shot this idiot by now.

Could absolutely _everything _about this be more messed up? It has taken her two days to track down and get in touch with the ambulance company that was sent to the warehouse that afternoon. It was another 24 hours to get the inexplicably misfiled duty roster and to figure out who had been in the ambulance with Castle. And now this guy.

Kate leans forward, her elbows on her knees. She wishes she could use the interrogation room, with its hard chairs and bright lights. "You don't remember anything about the afternoon of September 24th?" She isn't really in this guy's face. Yet. "You don't remember a call to the warehouses along Dock 74?"

Carl twitches, changing position again as he slowly shakes his head. There's a fine sheen of sweat across his forehead and his eyebrows are drawn together. Kate tries to unclench her fists, to relax in her chair instead of leaping up and shaking the answers out of him because holy shit, it's not like she's asking about Quantum Physics.

Carl is still shaking his stupid head, his eyes on his lap. "No...I mean, we get a lot of calls. You can't really remember one specific day, you know?" He swallows, his Adam's apple unusually large as it bobs in his throat.

"Really?" Kate's leg jerks, and she clenches her thighs to hold herself still, to hold herself in her chair. "You get a lot of calls, I get it. But this was a fatality." She's not going to let her voice shake. "Surely you can recall a fatality?"

Carl's eyes are darting all over the place. "It's…um…it's a lot of calls."

No. _No . _"Seriously?" Her head is going to explode. "How many fatalities do you have that you can't remember a guy that _you let die_ less than two months ago?" Her voice is loud and angry and she can't stop the shaking after all. That afternoon destroyed everything and this jackass doesn't even remember.

"I don't….I mean…" Carl is stuttering, shrinking back on the couch. The idiot can't even get a sentence out, and Kate has to blink at the sting behind her eyes, the tight coil of anger in her gut.

She left Castle at the mercy of this guy. This rambling, stupid moron who doesn't even _remember _him, and if this guy is indicative of the level of intellect that was attempting to save Castle's life then it is no wonder he is dead. While she went into shock or a fucking fugue state or whatever, stupid Carl was Castle's only hope, and it was no hope at all. There's a whoosh in her ears and actual sparks at the edge of her vision and she can't take it anymore.

Kate leaps to her feet. "C'mon! There's no way you're actually this stupid!" She takes a step, towering over Carl in her heels, just as the door to the break room flies opened.

"Yo Beckett. Can we talk to you for a second?" Esposito is in the doorway. He nods to Carl. "Sorry about this, man. Hang tight for a minute, all right?"

Kate steps toward the door. "What?" She's almost snarling. Everything seems covered in a red haze - she thought that was just an expression - and she might be about to throw up. Absolutely every aspect of this case is wrong, no one knows anything, and the most retarded paramedic on earth let Castle bleed to death and he claims he doesn't_ remember_. She doesn't have time to deal with Esposito and his worry. She has no time for him if he isn't going to help her.

"In the hall." Esposito steps back to let her through the door. Kate can see Ryan standing behind him, his face twisted with worry, and it's a reminder that she has got to pull this in, pull it together. Esposito pulls the door shut behind her and crosses his arms.

"I told you I would take care of this, Beckett." He is calm and even and patient and Kate wants to slap him. He's tried to stop her at every turn this week, always insisting that there is nothing to find.

"Beckett." Ryan leans towards her, his voice anxious, hesitant, but she can't be bothered with him now.

She narrows her eyes at Esposito. "I don't need you to take care of it. I'm taking care of it."

"There isn't anything to take care of." He doesn't sound quite so calm. Good. "This isn't an investigation, Beckett. What the fuck are you doing, interrogating this guy - this guy who isn't a suspect _because there isn't any case_ - in the fucking break room? Are you trying to get fired?"

"I'm trying to get some answers!"

"Gates isn't back from lunch yet." Ryan's darts a look at her, not meeting her eyes, before he turns back to Esposito. "We have time to get him out."

"No!" The hot knot in her stomach is getting tighter and she can barely stand still. "He's not going anywhere until I find out what he knows!"

Karpowski looks up from her desk. The uniform heading for the break room -the new guy whose name Kate hasn't learned - stops ten feet away and abruptly changes course. Esposito steps in front of her and Ryan moves up beside him.

"He doesn't know anything. He doesn't even remember a call from that day - you're just scaring the shit out of him." Esposito glances over his shoulder as if to confirm for himself that Gates isn't in her office. "You're lucky this guy seems too stupid to know you're playing fast and loose with his rights."

"What, were you listening at the door?"

"_Someone_ has to keep tabs on you, Beckett." Esposito is hissing, his veneer of calm completely gone, and loud as hell Kate hears what he isn't saying.

Someone has to stop her, because Castle isn't here to do it. It should make her grateful he cares. It doesn't.

"Beckett." Ryan glances at Esposito and sighs, weary and worried, damn him. "It's just a mix up."

"If it was just a mix-up then there would be an explanation." She's still too loud. "It wouldn't be almost impossible to find anything, it would -"

Esposito interrupts, urgent. "Just wait! Just wait until we get a hold of Rabinski before you do anything else -"

"He's incognito somewhere in Europe! We have no idea when – "

"Beckett." Ryan leans forward and grabs her hand, shocking her into silence. Reminding her again of how everything has changed. "Please. Stop."

Kate freezes at the catch in his voice, at the heaviness of his hand in hers. Shocked again into the realization that this grief isn't hers alone. That they've already lost one friend, and are terrified they will lose another to the dark obsession of an unanswerable why.

But.

"I can't. You know I can't."

Ryan is staring at the floor, blinking hard, his fingers gripping hers. "It won't bring him back."

"I know that." Kate swallows hard against the bile and the tears; slumps as she feels the weight of their concern settling over her, hot and smothering. Their worry. Their doubt. "You think I don't know that?"

They are both silent, still, and Kate can't look at them; can't confront their disbelief. She won't be able to stand it if she has to miss them, too. "Please." She echoes Ryan. "Please just talk to this guy. You'll see that something is off."

Esposito drops his arms. "Okay." He sounds worn out, exhausted, giving in to a toddler just to stop the screaming. "We'll talk to him. But then this is over, Beckett."

He pushes past her through the door.

Carl is on his feet before they're even in the room. The five minute break hasn't helped him. He is pale, sweaty, his shirt tail twisted and wrinkled in his nervous fingers. The sight of Esposito seems to unnerve him completely, and he's babbling before any one of them can say a word. It would be funny if everything weren't so unutterably awful.

"Look, I don't know what she told you, but I don't remember anything, okay?" He's breathing hard, his eyes shifting between then like he's under attack as he edges toward the door. "Can I just go?"

"Hey, man, calm down." Ryan steps forward, his voice friendly, relaxed, his eyes quizzical. Esposito frowns and moves to block the door, spooked. "We just want to ask you a few questions."

Carl takes a breath, visibly tries to control his freak out. "I already answered her questions. I think I should be allowed to go."

"Sure." Ryan is agreeable, calm. "As soon as you confirm for us what you remember from the call you responded to on September 24th."

Carl's tenuous control slips. "I don't remember anything! I don't, I swear!" The guy is vibrating, tension coming off him in waves. "We have too many calls for me to remember when we had that writer guy!"

Everything stills so fast it's like all the air has been sucked out of the room. Carl pales so quickly Kate is afraid he will pass out. Is afraid she will pass out.

He doesn't remember _that writer guy_?

"Well, shit." Esposito turns toward Kate, his voice grim, something like an apology in his eyes. "Shit."

Exactly.

* * *

A/N – Thanks to the usual suspects, -Laura, Julie, Nic – for reading and correcting. You guys are always the awesomest.:)

Also, insert standard apology for the time between updates, but this time I actually have a sort of an excuse that involves my house, stupidity, and water damage. Be careful with your bathtubs, guys. FYI, those little drain thingies at the top don't work AT ALL.

Thanks to everyone who is still with this. I really appreciate all your reviews, pm's and notes on Tumblr.:)


	6. Chapter 6

_After 7 weeks_

Esposito pushes into the observation room, shoving the door closed behind him. "It's pointless, Carl's not breaking." He shakes head, disgusted. "I can't believe that _this guy_ isn't breaking. He's a total idiot."

"Damn it." Kate slams her fist against the two way glass, and inside the interrogation room Carl jumps. Good. Kate glares through the mirror, feeling perversely satisfied that he's pacing back and forth, a pale, sweaty mess. "We can't just let him _leave_."

"Maybe he really doesn't know anything else." Ryan keeps glancing at his watch, his mouth tense, his eyes worried.

"No, look at how he's freaking out." They turn to stare at Carl, who's wiping the sweat off his face with his shirt tail and muttering to himself. Awesome. "He knows something. And he can freak out all he wants, but he's not leaving until he gives me every damn detail of that ambulance ride."

"I don't know, Beckett." Esposito frowns. "I was so in his face I was spitting on it. He was about to wet his pants, and he still sworn he didn't know what we were talking about. Said he only realized it was Castle in his bus after he heard about it on the news."

"Why didn't he just say that in the first place?" Kate could hear her voice rising, tried to rein it in. "No, he's hiding something."

"Maybe." Esposito looks doubtful. "But he seems way too stupid."

They turn as one toward the interrogation room. Now Carl is slumped at the table instead of pacing like a dog in a crate, but he's still talking to himself, his hands wrapped around his head.

Ryan checks his watch again. "Whatever we're going to do, it has to be in the next five minutes. Unless you _want_ Gates to bust us for flagrantly violating Carl the Paramedic's rights."

"He's right, Beckett. We've got nothing, no reason to hold him." Esposito steps up next to her, his hand on her elbow. "Hey. We'll figure this out. But not if we're all suspended."

"Damn it." The hot ball of anger in her gut is knotting, getting tighter. To be so close… Kate twists around, yanks open the door. "Cut him loose."

* * *

"Beckett." Esposito is standing by her desk, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, his hands clenched in fists. He sounds like he's holding onto his patience with his finger nails. "For the last time, there was nothing. The car was clean."

Kate pushes back from her desk and drops her head in her hands. "That's not possible. Bauchman had to have _something i_n his car."

"Like what? A signed confession?" Esposito takes a breath, his hand to his head. "I'm sorry."

Kate nods at him, rubs her eyes. It's almost midnight. They've been at this for six hours and haven't found anything. They're all tired and frustrated and hungry, but no one wants to quit. They're looking for the answer - any answer – together, and for the briefest of seconds Kate can remember what normal feels like.

"Look, Beckett, seriously. It wasn't even Bauchman's car; he used one from the city fleet. There were, like, maps, and his laptop case. That was it."

"Did tech go through the laptop?"

Esposito barely refrains from rolling his eyes. "Yes, they went over his laptop. Nothing unexpected. Tons of shit about the money laundering – Bauchman wasn't brilliant; someone needs to tell him Gchat ain't exactly the most covert way to plan illegal activities.

Ryan doesn't look up from the file he's reading. "That's why I don't use Gchat."

"For planning your convert illegal activities?" Kate deadpans, feeling her mouth twitch.

"No, for talking to Jenny."

Esposito shoots her a glance. "Dude. What exactly are you chatting about with Jenny that you don't want on record?"

Ryan goes bright red. "No, that's not…I mean..."

"Gross, bro. We're at work."

Kate coughs, something stuck in her throat. It's only when both of the guys turn to her, surprised, that she realizes it was a laugh. She was laughing.

She's teasing Ryan about his wife while she's surrounded by reports and files about Castle's death. Castle is dead and she's laughing with Esposito.

"Excuse me." She stands up so fast her chair skids into the desk behind her. _Oh God, oh God._

"Beckett?" Ryan is half out of his own seat, the color rapidly draining from his face. Esposito has already taken a step toward her, his hand out to grab her arm.

Kate leaps back, her hands in front of her. "No, I….I just…I'll be back in a minute."

She turns and tries not to run, tries to get to the bathroom before she has to curl up right on the floor of the bullpen.

Castle is dead. Castle is dead, and she is making jokes like everything is normal and happy and fun.

Like she's forgotten that nothing is allowed to be any of those things ever, ever again.

* * *

_After 7 weeks_

Castle grits his teeth as he holds the bed rail with his free hand, yanking as hard as he can with the other against the handcuffs. The sheet is threaded around and around the metal, both to protect his wrist and muffle the constant clank as he tries to bend the bar.

It's agony. A burning flare of agony with every jerk of his arm, radiating from his chest outward until even his fingertips are burning.

Two days. Two days of rubbing his wrist raw and pulling his stitches trying to break the bedrail to slip the cuffs free, and the bar is barely dented. Castle considers it a major victory that he hasn't thrown up or passed out. Yet.

Castle yanks again, harder. The scream rising in his throat almost chokes him, but the fucking bar is apparently made of either titanium or some secret super-villain mutant metal, because it doesn't move.

Or maybe it doesn't move because he's exerting the force of a five-year-old. A five-year-old who's been shot. Twice.

Castle collapses against the pillow, trying to ease some air past the pit of fire in his chest. His vision is whiting out, the pain a constant, heavy haze he can barely think through. Desperately he casts about with his mind; for a distraction, for relief, for…

"_Kate?" She's standing before him in their bedroom in the Hamptons, still in that sinful excuse for a bikini. The one he bought her and he still can't believe she actually wears. He's just stepped out of the bathroom, still damp from his shower, and he almost drops his towel. Holy God._

"_What?" The innocence in her voice is totally at odds with the look on her face, the smooth, feral way she is sliding up to him. The handcuffs she is idly swinging from one elegant finger._

"_What- " Castle has to clear his throat. He's almost squeaking, excitement squeezing his lungs, blocking his throat. "What are those for?"_

_Kate cocks an eyebrow as she steps into his body; a long, lithe expanse of sun-soaked skin brushing against him that sets his nerves tingling down to his finger tips. "What do you think?"_

"_I think…yay?" He is already leaning into her, one hand caressing the smooth curve of her waist, his mouth on the delicate expanse of her throat. Tenderly pushing the hair behind her ear with slightly unsteady fingers. He loves her so much; is so very, very lucky._

"_Yay." She whispers in his ear, and he swears he feels her shiver before he is shoved backwards. In the half a moment before his back hits the mattress his stomach drops out, like a dream of falling, falling for her, always, again and again._

Castle sinks into the mattress and squeezes his eyes shut against the onslaught of pain. He's so dizzy he feels like he's spinning, falling, and despair threatens to swallow him like a gaping black hole.

It's pointless. The damn bar isn't going to break. The whole thing is an exercise in total futility. If he actually manages to crack the bar, what then? His leg injury is nothing to the one in his chest, but Castle still isn't sure he can stumble more than ten feet without collapsing.

But he can't do nothing. Can't abandon Kate so entirely.

He tries to take a breath, braces himself; yanks against the bar again as he tries to ignore the sear of fire, the lick of nausea along his insides. Please let the stupid bar break, bend, move a millimeter, _something_. Sweat gathers along his hairline as he realizes he might have to snap his thumb if this doesn't work.

Everything hurts. He can't even focus his damn eyes, and Castle's pretty sure if he has to break his thumb he'll pass out before he can even pull his hand from the cuffs, which won't work at all. Passing out will negate the plan to run like hell for his life. For Kate's life.

Right. Running. Ha. So stupid. More like painfully shuffling for maybe five minutes until he is caught and/or shot. But he won't even get those five minutes if he's unconscious.

Okay. Another jerk, this time with his whole bicep and shoulder engaged and, no, no, _mistake_, because the hot surge of pain and nausea is almost overwhelming. It seizes him up, threatens to turn his stomach inside out, and he frantically tries to think of anything else.

_His stomach flips as the cuffs snap closed around the headboard, the sound unnaturally loud in the drowsy room. The windows are opened, but the blinds are drawn against the midday heat. Errant sunlight slipping through the cracks catch the dust motes that circle with the lazy turn of the ceiling fan, bright points of light in dim, dream-like haze. Slips of the light slide against Kate's pale, naked skin, making her seem almost otherworldly, magical. A mystical being come to save him or conquer him. Maybe both._

"_You okay?" Kate is still whispering, even though there is no one to overhear._

_Castle's arms are stretched above his head, his wrists secured to the bed frame. From astride his waist Kate leans forward and lightly encircles his wrists with her cool, slim fingers before running her hands down the sensitive skin of his exposed inner arms. Just that, just her fingertips against that tender skin, is enough to set off sparks behind his eyes. He's positive this is going to kill him. _

"_I'm perfect."_

_Kate smiles, his favorite smile, the one that says she knows a secret and is about to show him what it is. Slowly she bends at the waist, her chest just brushing his, and already he is involuntarily pulling against the cuffs, aching to hold her. Her hands are slipping along his ribs, his neck, igniting points of cool fire with every touch. His heartbeat is slow and heavy, his breath coming shallow, the love pushing against his lungs leaving no room for air._

_Kate runs the tip of her tongue along his lower lip, the lightest tease, and that, just that, has him arching his hips into hers._

"_Kate." They have barely begun, but he is breathless, undone, helpless against her gentle assault._

"_Shhh." She slips down his body, her mouth opened and wet. Her hair trails against his stomach, the tops of his thighs, her mouth and tongue so hot around him that he bows off the bed._

_His heart is pounding, his blood like fire in his veins. The cuffs bite into his wrists as his body twists, out of his control. He is gasping; words of love spilling out unchecked, and this vulnerability would be frightening if he didn't know he was safe. Safe with her._

Castle is panting, each breath practically killing him. The bar holds as firm as ever, but for a moment he forgets, lost in a different sort of pain.

"_I love you." She whispers against his hair as she rocks against him, melts around him, clenches him tight. Stretched out beneath her he is helpless, enslaved, enraptured, unable to do anything but feel. His hips rise to meet hers and it is too much, he can't hold on. He wants to see her but his eyes slam shut as his hands clench against the headboard, everything in him surging into her. "I love you."_

Castle closes his eyes as the tears trickle down sides of his face, slide into his ears.

_I love you, Kate. So much._

He is going to die here. He's going to die here, and he will never see her again.

It's too much. He's too tired. Exhausted with missing her, with trying to push back the dark wave of despair. With trying to remind himself that he can stand whatever happens to him as long as he knows Kate will be okay.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, but is it still insanity if you don't have any other options?

Castle opens his eyes, grabs the bar, ignores the hateful pain. Braces himself.

Again.

* * *

.

* * *

Laura and Nic were very awesome and fixed this for me.:) Really, I think I made Laura read, like, 3 version of the Castle scene.

As always, thanks so very, very much to everyone who is reading and alerting and reviewing and just generally making me feel awesome.:)

I can't believe we are 6 days away, you guys! eeeeee!:)


	7. Chapter 7

The phone had rung at 8:32 pm. It was a Tuesday.

Why does he remember that? The exact time. There was no way he could have known then that it was the beginning of the end of everything.

Had he been waiting for it? Maybe he'd been anticipating that moment since she'd come to him in the rain. Ever since she'd cut a man's face and told him she was done being afraid.

Castle had never stopped being afraid. Not really.

* * *

_Four months before_

"Kate. That's totally cheating." Castle desperately stared at the game board and not at Kate, who was lounging next to him on the couch, languidly twisting her hair. She was purposefully being provocative, the devious little cheater, but it wasn't going to work. He was not going to give in first.

Except he was absolutely going to give in first, because if he wasn't having sex with her in the next sixty seconds he might actually, physically die.

Of course, that had been his default setting for the last three weeks, ever since the impossible had happened and dreams had come true and Kate had shown up dripping wet at his door, telling him he was allowed to love her. Part of him finally relaxed, while the larger part was suddenly gripped with urgency, like he had to make up for lost time. As if it could all end in a heartbeat.

Castle told himself that this was normal. He had yearned for her so long it was just going to take a bit until he could really believe that this was his reality and not the most perfect fantasy ever.

Speaking of fantasies, why he had ever thought Strip Chess was good idea? He needed to concentrate to beat Kate at chess; it should have been obvious that he couldn't afford the distraction of nakedness. To add insult to, well, insult, she had only lost her shirt while he was already down to his boxers. His very tented boxers.

It was just supposed to be something to do while they waited for the pizza to arrive. Castle had figured Kate plus chess equaled sexy (he was very, very right), and maybe he wanted to show off his own skills a little, but he never thought they would actually, truly play. He figured either the pizza would arrive and they'd stop to eat, or he would be unable to resist Kate's sexy strategizing self and they'd stop to…do other things.

He'd forgotten how competitive Kate was. He'd forgotten how competitive _he_ was, but it'd come rushing back to him when she'd laughed at his third move and informed him she was going to make him beg for mercy.

_Someone_ was going to be begging for mercy. In his bed.

Only that wasn't working out either, because Kate – to be extra evil – had included an addendum to the Strip Chess rules, specifying that whoever capitulated to the need for sex first automatically forfeited the game.

In retrospect, it's obvious she was planning on torturing him, but at the time Castle had erroneously believed he had a chance since they had_ just had_ sex thirty minutes previously, when they had gotten back to his loft. Against the door. He loved that door.

But he had grossly overestimated his ability to resist Kate (nonexistent) as well as forgotten that he literally could never get enough of her, and now he was so, so screwed. It wasn't bad enough that she was unfairly using her nakedness to befuddle him. Now she was trying to trick him with illegal chess moves.

"It's not cheating." Kate pulled her hand away from the chess board and ran it along his bare inner thigh. Castle sucked in a breath, and she frowned with false concern as she scooted closer to him on the couch. "Are you sure you know the rules?"

"Of course…" He stuttered to a stop as her hand moved closer to the edge of his boxer shorts. God, if she would just stop _touching_ him. He should make that a rule. Castle grabbed her fingers. "Stop that. Of course I know the rules, I made up this game."

Kate tilted her head and fixed him with a look, her hair sliding against the bare skin of her shoulders and upper arm. Her bare _upper arm_ was making his stomach clench, that's how bad this was. He wasn't going to make it.

"You didn't invent chess, Castle."

Unf. The firelight was flickering across her torso, patterns Castle desperately wanted to trace with his fingers and tongue. Must. Not. Let. Her. Win. He dragged his eyes back up to her face. "No, but I thought up the strip part."

Kate laughed. She smoothed her hair behind her ear, the back of her hand trailing against her neck and collar bone. His throat contracted but his mouth was so dry there was nothing to swallow.

"You didn't invent stripping, either."

"Strip chess, Beckett. You know what I mean." He waved his hand at the chess board on the coffee table, unable to tear his gaze from her. "And that move you just made isn't allowed."

"Castle. I know you believe you're a genius at strategy and adult entertainment, but this is a legal move in chess, strip or otherwise. " Kate reached over the board and moved her king two spaces to the right, then moved her rook to the left of the king's square. "You can move two pieces at once if you're castling."

Castle took a deep breath and forced his eyes to the board. Okay. Good idea. Discuss actual strategy and don't look directly at her. "Yes, but castling is only allowed if you haven't yet moved your king, and you have. Therefore, cheater."

"Castllllle" Kate sing-songed, her fingers sending hot shivers down his spine as she stroked his neck. "You're only arguing because you're losiiiing."

"You know, let's think about this." Castle was proud of how normal his voice sounded. Scraping words past the parched desert of his throat wasn't easy. "We're both almost naked. Am I really losing?"

"Nice try, Castle, but I'm still going to win."

"Not with that move you're not." That was almost impressively in control, except for the squeak at the end after he'd accidentally let his eyes drift to her chest long enough to realize that her bra was transparent.

Kate slowly blinked, her impossibly long eyelashes brushing her cheeks. She shrugged, somehow pushing her breasts up at the same time, like a freaking sexual magician. "You're right. That move can backfire."

Okay. Yes. Strategy talk. Not nakedness. "What…um…what do you mean?" Don't look at her boobs.

Kate leaned back against the cushions, her stomach flat and smooth, her skin like silk. "It's too restrictive, too risky. Use it wrong and the king you're trying to protect gets trapped. You've sacrificed your rook for nothing."

Ohhh shit. This was a huge tactical error. Kate talking chess strategy was just as hot as her blatantly trying to seduce him and _no, no concentrate_. Castle swallowed hard. "Yes, but…" Her hand was back on his thigh. Breathe. "…at least you've gotten the rook in the game. Now you can use it. And it might work."

"Might. It's only the possibility of protection, and you're likely to lose your rook. It's a big risk." Kate raised her eyebrows and slowly looked him up and down. "You're awfully ballsy tonight, Castle. For a naked man."

"I cannot begin to explain to you the level of self control I'm having to exert to prevent myself from making a 'ballsy' and 'naked' joke." That was amazingly coherent. Managing speech was amazing.

"Hmmm." Kate pulled herself up by the hand on his thigh, then slowly leaned in and _licked_ his _neck_. "I bet you're having to exert self-control over a lot of things right now."

Castle clenched his hands into fists and sat on them so he wouldn't reach for her. "This is definitely cheating, Kate. Neck licking is cheating. Just like your illegal castling move is cheating."

"Okay." Kate sat back and it took everything in him not to pull her back, pull her under him. "I was just trying to speed up the game a little. Help you out." She stood up in one sinuous movement and smiled at him. His stomach dropped and clenched, because she was so evil and he loved her _so much_. "I lose the turn, right?" She started shimmying her pants over her hips.

"What…. what are you…" His tongue tripped over itself as she stepped out of her pants, her legs long and lithe in the firelight and – "Oh my God. What are those?"

"What?" Her eyes were wide as she ran her hands down her hips, her fingers catching in the gossamer strings of her panties. "You gave these to me."

And she _wore _them? Dead. He was dead.

Kate pulled lightly on the straps, her fingers slipping just under the elastic. There was an answering tug in his groin as he somehow got even harder. Castle groaned. "You're only doing this to distract me."

Kate climbed beside him and leaned forward on her hands, her hair swinging against her breasts as they strained against the lacy cups of her bra. She slowly rocked forward until her breath was hot against his ear. "Are you distracted?"

That did it.

"Yes." He surged against her, toppling her into the couch. "You win. Forever. I give up."

"Oh, thank God." Kate wrapped her legs around his waist, the skin to skin contact such a relief he could barely keep his eyes opened. "I thought you would never give in."

Castle flicked her bra opened, tried to hold back a groan at the sight of her. "_You_ could have given in."

Kate smiled as she ran her hands over his ass and pulled him against her. "Where's the fun in that?"

"Here." His voice was muffled as he kissed her neck, her smiling mouth. "Here's the fun."

Kate laughed, a high, breathy sound that was more like a gasp. "You're fun." She pulled herself against him, pushing them both up until she was straddling his lap. She cupped his face in both hands and leaned in until her forehead was touching his, her breasts grazing his chest, her hips slowly undulating.

He was going to die. He was going die, and they hadn't even really started yet.

Castle was just reaching between them for those ridiculous panty strings – they should snap with one twist, he'd get her a new pair – when someone's phone rang, loud and shrill. Intrusive.

"Ignore it." Damn it, those strings were stronger than they looked.

"Not my phone." Kate reached on his other side and handed him his phone. Why was she handing him his phone?

"It's too late to be calling." He checked his phone. "I don't know this number."

"It's..." Kate glanced at her wrist, and she was naked but for her panties and her watch and why were they still talking? Whoever it was could wait. "It's only 8:32."

"Shit, it's probably the pizza place, their new guy got lost last time." Castle lifted the phone to his ear, his other hand still on her hip, his fingers tangled in the edge of her panties. "Hello?" Why did he even care if the pizza guy was lost? The pizza guy could take his time.

"Mr. Castle." The voice on the other end was hearty and jovial. Unfamiliar.

"Yes?" Castle heard his own impatience, because this probably _wasn't_ the pizza guy and now he was stuck on the phone with Kate almost _naked _in his _lap._

"Who is it?" Kate splayed her hand across his abdomen, her fingers teasing lower, and whoever was on the phone needed to hurry the hell up.

"Mr. Castle," the voice repeats. "Please excuse yourself from Ms. Beckett. We need to talk."

* * *

Castle stood up so fast that Kate flipped off his lap onto the couch. She landed on her back, silken limbs draped over the edge, her hair feathered out along the couch cushions, so beautiful she made his throat hurt. His heart beat was loud in his ears, a ricocheting thump like a war drum.

"Castle, what the – "

"Shhhh." He flapped his hand at her and stepped back, as if that would help. As though he could increase the physical distance between Kate and the horror that was waiting on the phone, could keep them from finding her for just a few moments more.

"Who is it?" Kate whispered this time, but Castle edged back a little more. She sat up, her brow knit. "They can't hear me, Castle."

But they could. Somehow they – oh God, could they _see _them?

Castle tried to hold very still, to resist the urge to cover Kate, to hide her. He couldn't panic.

"It's the pizza guy. I'm …I'm just going to give him directions." He licked his lips and tried to smile. "I'll be right back."

"Okay." Kate was staring at him like he was crazy. Maybe he was.

* * *

"What do you want?" Castle stood braced against the counter in the kitchen, his back to the living room. He didn't have to ask who it was.

"I'm sorry to interrupt your evening, Mr. Castle." The voice was chagrinned. "I would ask you to offer Ms. Beckett my apologies, but it's best if she remains unaware of the details of this call."

"Want do you _want_?" The bile stung the back of his throat, thick and bitter.

There was a sigh on the other end. "It has come to our attention that the information Ms. Beckett claims to have regarding Senator Bracken may not be as….complete as she previously indicated. If that is the case we may not be able to guarantee that she will remain protected."

Castle gripped the counter as he swayed; as everything, his whole life, was pulled from beneath him. "Don't you touch her."

"Ah." There was a long pause. "So you concur? Her information is not complete?"

Shit. Shit, no, what did he – "That's not what I said."

"Oh dear." There was a tsking sound. "I hope not. It would be such a shame if anything were to happen to Kate Beckett. But I'm afraid that's not entirely within my control."

"Look." His legs gave out and he slid to the floor, his head resting against the cabinet. "She has the information on Bracken. You hurt her, he goes down."

"I want to believe you, but even so, it might not be enough. We may need to….renegotiate our deal."

"Leave her alone." Castle shoved the words out as his throat constricted, his body jerking in a violent shiver as the cold from spread from the inside out. This couldn't be happening. Of course it was happening.

Another sigh. "I would like too, I really would. But that depends on you, Mr. Castle. What would you do to save her?"

There were black spots at the corners of his eyes. His stomach was turning in on itself and he would totally fly apart if it weren't for the cold, hard calm at his center that had always known this wasn't over. That it will never really be over.

Unless he ends it.

"Anything. I'll do anything."

* * *

...

* * *

A/N -Okay. Wow. This wait was ridiculous, even for me. Thank you so, so much to everyone who has reviewed, or who emailed me or asked about this on Tumblr, Twitter, etc. I'm so excited you guys still care about this story, and I won't abandon it, even though I totally don't blame you if you don't believe me.:) But I promise I won't.

Thanks to Laura and Jessie and Nic, who looked over this and were awesome and encouraging and basically never told me to just suck it up and write, even though I totally would have deserved it. And thanks to ER, who broke out the hilarious tough love while still being her darling sweet and funny self.

Thanks again for reading. I hope you're still enjoying it.:)


	8. Chapter 8

_After, 7 weeks_

"Beckett?"

Ryan is hesitant, tentative. Afraid he will set her off into a grief spiral. Kate can hear him shifting in his seat but doesn't look up from her desk.

"Yeah?" Damn. She sounds brittle, her voice shredded against the jagged knot in her throat.

It's the first time they've spoken in the thirty minutes since Kate emerged from the bathroom, her eyes gritty, her shaky hands clenched into fists at her sides. Esposito had started to say something, but Kate held up her hand to ward off his concern and refused to make eye contact as she made her way to her desk. There isn't time for their worry and pity. She's already wasted enough time tonight crying in the bathroom.

Tonight, and the last seven weeks, all while Castle's murder was a puzzle she didn't even realize needed to be solved.

Ryan's chair scrapes back and then he is beside her, holding out a paper. A list. "Have you seen this?"

Kate flattens her palms against her desk to still the trembling and let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding. Ryan isn't telling her he's going home, then.

She takes a breath and reaches for it, blinking. Her tired eyes are refusing to focus. "What is this?"

"Stuff in Bauchman's car. It's probably nothing, but I haven't seen it before."

Kate frowns. It looks trivial but - "Espo? I thought you said the only thing in Bauchman's car were maps and his laptop?"

Esposito looks up, his eyes heavy, the lines around his mouth pronounced. "That's right. Why?"

Kate holds up the report. "This is a list of stuff that was in his laptop case. In the pockets."

Esposito rubs his eyes and squints, like he's going to be able to read it from fifteen feet away. "Yeah, I saw that, but it wasn't anything important - pens and spare change. Gum."

"There were a few other things, might be worth checking out." Ryan points to the paper with one hand while trying to cover up a yawn with the other. "There was a receipt. Dated that morning."

"From the gas station, right? Probably where he got the gum." Esposito drops his eyes back to the paper scattered across his desk and unsuccessfully tries to hide a yawn behind his own hand. "Damn, I caught your yawn, bro."

"Espo?" Kate almost flinches at the sound of her own voice, too loud in the deserted bullpen. "There's another receipt for $159.99. From an electronics store." How did she miss this? Crying in the bathroom is how. "There wasn't anything in the car?"

Ryan shrugs. "Not according to these lists."

Esposito stands up and rolls his shoulders, frowning a little. "Does it say what for?"

"No, just the amount, but if he used his credit card…" Kate reaches for her phone with hands that are shaking again. It's a total shot in the dark, but it's _something_. "We can call the store, they'll have a record-"

"Beckett." Esposito is carefully casual, but he steps to her desk in two strides to lay his hand on her wrist. "It's after midnight. They're closed, we'll call in the morning." He glances at Ryan, who reaches up to give her shoulder a little squeeze. "It's probably nothing. You know that, right?"

"I know." Kate can't look at him.

It's nothing. She knows it's nothing. But it's something to do, _something _-

"We should go home. We all need some rest."

Kate shrugs Ryan's hand away. "You guys go. I – "

Her phone shrills in her hand, making them all jump.

"Ugh." Ryan grabs his chest. "Heart attack."

"Shit, no kidding." Esposito shakes his head and pulls at her wrist to see her phone. The number is unknown. "Who's calling you at this hour?"

Kate swipes to answer and raises the phone to her ear, very deliberately not thinking about how she is so isolated and uninvolved that receiving a phone call is surprising.

"Hello?" Her phone is trembling against her face. She needs a vat of coffee.

There is a long silence. And then. "Detective Beckett?" The disembodied voice on the other end is vaguely familiar. "This is Carl Rymeiser? The paramedic? I spoke to you yesterday?"

Kate sits up straight, her nerves on end, wide awake. Answers. There are answers right here. She grabs Ryan's hand and squeezes. "Yes, Carl." She stares at Esposito as his eyes widen. "I remember you."

"I think…" Carl pauses and she can hear his rapid breaths, loud against the mouthpiece. His desperation is almost palpable, even through the phone. "I think I need to talk to you."

* * *

She's back in the warehouse. It's different this time.

Usually the dream starts the moment she pulls Castle across her lap, his eyes staring, his blood sticky and warm on her stomach and thighs. Sometimes it begins seconds before, when she wakes up on the cold warehouse floor, her hands slippery, Castle stretched out behind her, surrounded by blood in a circle so large she immediately knows he doesn't have a chance.

But this time the minutes have rolled back. She and Castle have just entered the warehouse. The sun light is bright and ominous, the beams from the upper windows almost blinding her. Somehow Kate is both in the dream and watching it unfold, and the sense of prescience horror is almost more than she can bear.

Castle's presence is warm at her back. It should be comforting, but she's bracing for the gun shot.

Councilman Bauchman is already at the far end of the vast opened space. He's flat against the wall, his empty hands high in the air, his fingers flexing against nothing, and something is wrong. The _nothing_ is wrong.

Shots ring out. Bauchman slumps down the wall, a trail of blood smearing behind him. There is a flash and a boom, and Kate startles awake, her heart beating so hard it is blocking her throat, trapping her air.

"You were supposed to go home."

Esposito is hunched over the table with a cup of coffee, the weak morning light highlighting the pallor of his skin, the bags under his eyes.

Kate sits up so fast she feels dizzy. She can feel the hard thump of her pulse from her stomach out to the tips of her fingers, her whole body seizing up as suddenly it clicks.

"Bauchman wasn't holding a gun." The words rush out. She shoves at the blanket tangled around her arms, half-noticing that it's actually Esposito's coat.

Esposito's cup hits the table with an audible clank. "What?"

"In my dream. Bauchman didn't have a gun." Kate stands up, pulled to her feet, her body like a live wire. "He couldn't have shot Castle."

Esposito stares at her. "In your _dream_, Beckett. Dreams don't make sense."

But Kate can still see it, Bauchman backed against the wall, his hands in the air. His empty hands. "It felt real. The details, it was _just like_ that day. Javi -"

"But you don't remember what happened that day."

"What if I just did?"

Esposito shakes his head, his face troubled. "We _know _he shot Castle -"

"We don't know anything. It's all lies, a cover up."

"Okay, yes, it's fucked up, but if Bauchman didn't shoot him, who did? We found the gun in his hand."

Kate sinks down on the couch and covers her face, digging her fingers into her eye sockets. "I don't know."

The cushion dips as Esposito sits beside her. "We'll talk to that paramedic and we'll figure this shit out. But until then I think you need to go home, get some rest."

"There's no time." Kate shrugs off Esposito's hand and stands up. "I need the ballistics report, I have to –"

"Guys?"

Ryan is in the doorway, a paper in his hand. "That receipt? I figured out what it's for." He frowns, perplexed. "It's for a camera. Two hours before he was in that warehouse Councilman Bauchman bought a video camera."

* * *

Kate shuts the door to the break room and leans against it, her arms crossed to hold her ribs together. "Why would he have a video camera?"

"He probably he just wanted to record his grandkids. This doesn't necessarily mean anything." Esposito sounds gentle and reasonable and Kate has to fight against the angry words pushing against her throat. Has to remind herself that he just wants to help her.

Kate takes the paper, running over the details, her pulse heavy. "Then where's the camera?" She turns to Ryan. "The time stamp on the receipt is 2:47 pm. Castle and I saw him enter the warehouse around 3:15 and …" Her throat closes up when she tries to articulate what happened next.

Ryan only hesitates a second before he continues for her. "And you called for backup immediately, entering the warehouse five minutes later."

"Right." Kate swallows hard. "We know Bauchman didn't leave the warehouse after he went in." She points at the paperwork. "According to this, he bought the camera 30 minutes earlier, at a store 25-30 minutes from the warehouse. He had no time to take it anywhere. It should have been in the car or on his person, but it wasn't. So where is it?"

"Beckett." Esposito is rubbing his head, weary. But Ryan is looking at her, something in his eyes. Something like belief.

"He didn't have time to leave it anywhere."

"No, he didn't." Kate draws in a stuttering breath, her pulse so fast she can feel it thumping against her temple, her wrists. Heat floods her cheeks as she is struck with the long-dormant sensation of discovery, of clues clicking into place.

"The camera's in the warehouse."

* * *

Someone's coming down the hall.

Castle drops into the pillows and tries to stop gasping, tries to look as though he wasn't in the middle of the most pointless and ill-conceived escape plan of all time. He clenches his teeth against the nausea and tries to breathe quietly. Please don't be Turk. He isn't up for another game of mental chess when it's all he can do not to hyperventilate.

Damn it. Castle squeezes his eyes shut and tells himself it's sweat running down his face, not tears at the utter hopelessness of everything.

The bar hasn't moved. All he's managed to do is mangle the skin of his wrist. His chest is on fire, a burning ache that is only getting worse, and he's afraid he's pulled some stitches. Passing out is not beyond the realm of possibility, and while vomiting is almost a sure thing, the footsteps in the hall are closer, slowing down.

The medical cart rattles as it comes to a stop outside his door, and Castle's throat relaxes a fraction because the cart means the nurse, not Turk. But, shit, the nurse…

Castle fumbles the sheet from around the handcuffs, an attempt to hide the evidence, but his blood is smeared, red and bright, against the white of the sheet. A macabre pattern that might as well be a red flag.

The nurse steps into the room. She wheels the cart to the side of his bed and begins preparing his bandages in silence. She doesn't look at him.

It's the same woman who appears twice a day to check his vitals, change his dressing, administer the sedative. Castle thinks she also brings him his meals, but that might be another woman entirely. With their pulled back brown hair, their black scrubs and their silence, it's impossible to tell them apart. They are nameless and voiceless and indistinguishable to the point that Castle honestly isn't sure if there are two of them or not.

In the beginning Castle would attack her (them?) with a flurry of questions every time she appeared. Calm, rational entreaties that rapidly escalated into desperate begging when she refused to answer. Not even refused, just ignored with an indifferent obliviousness so complete it was almost inhuman.

He gave up weeks ago, and now stares ahead in stoic silence while she attends to his wounds, half-convinced that his nebulous enemies are developing an army of robot minions, of which this nurse and her possible doppelganger are prototypes. If so, they might want to consider making her more life-like.

But robot or not, she's going to notice his elevated heart rate, his clammy skin, his bloody wrist. His plan, his stupid, hopeless plan is over, and there is nothing else he can do. Castle squeezes his eyes shut and tries not to think about Kate. He won't cry in front of them.

The nurse turns to him and reaches for his wrist but stops, her fingers just touching his skin. She takes a slow breath, and Castle would have fallen over if he wasn't already lying down, because she speaks.

"They know what you're doing." Her lips are barely moving, her eyes downcast, and Castle is pretty sure he's either lost consciousness or is having a hallucination brought on by inadequate oxygen. Or they've given the robots a voice control upgrade.

"What?"

She turns his wrist over and pushes back the sheet to reveal the bloody abrasions. "They know. No one's stopped you because they know you can't really break it."

Castle can't make his tongue work. "I don't…what? Why – "

"It's something for you to do, to wear you down."

His stomach drops out and pressure stings behind his eyes, because obviously it's always been hopeless. But they _knew_, were playing with him.

Of course they are. This is all a game, and he lost a long time ago.

"Get out." He presses against his eyes with his free hand, a futile effort to hold back the tears. "Get out. Please."

She continues as though he hasn't spoken. "It's a good thing it didn't work. You'd only have gotten caught. They would've just killed you. Sooner." She pauses for a fraction of a second. "You wouldn't have known that the exit is to the left, and to the left again, and then to the right."

Everything freezes. Castle can actually feel his muscles lock with shock, and for a second, one beautiful infinitesimal second, something like hope flickers in his chest.

But no. It's a trick. Another sick game. They've sent her to toy with him, to make him think he has a chance.

"Right." He forces a laugh. "Just like that you're giving me the way out. Why are you – " She rubs a cotton ball soaked in disinfectant against his broken skin and he jerks back, hissing.

"Wait." Her fingers close around his forearm and she finally, finally looks him in the eye. "Let me help you."

Castle blinks hard, his arm tense in her hold. He won't hope. He won't.

"Please. You need help, Mr. Castle."

Her voice is low for a woman's, oddly pleasant. As she peers into his face Castle realizes she's younger than he thought. Her eyes are blue, and the unexpected sympathy he finds there pinches his throat.

Castle lets her take his arm, the fight seeping out of him as exhausted tears slip from the corners of his eyes. He has no game, no strategy left. She has to be lying, but for one minute he will pretend that she really wants to help him. That she is kind.

"If you bandage it, he'll know I know that he knows." He's not making any sense. None of this makes any sense. "Turk. He'll know."

She shrugs, concentrating on wrapping his wrist. "He wants you to know. To make you feel hopeless." Her gaze barely flicks back to his and she pauses, her fingers tightening on his wrist. "Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Feel hopeless." Her hands are tucking in the ends of the bandage against the inside of his wrist, against his palm. "There's always hope."

"What? Who –" He's too tired, too confused, what is she -

She squeezes his hand, something hard biting into his palm, her voice almost inaudible. "You have friends, Mr. Castle." She lets go and steps away and is gone without looking back, the rattle of the cart fading out down the hall.

Castle takes one slow breath, and then another, his hand clenched hard around it, something erupting in his chest.

Under the covers he slowly opens his bandaged hand. He stares at it for second, and then the hot push behind his eyes and the swell in his throat is too much. He starts to cry, silent, violent sobs that feel like they will turn him inside out. His defenses are decimated, destroyed, and he can't stop it. He's helpless against the wave of hope that engulfs him.

Nestled in his palm is a small key.

The key to the cuffs.

* * *

A/N - Thanks to the usual suspects, and to Laura who helped me seriously untangle large chunks of this.

Thanks so much to everyone for reading. I'm overwhelmed by the response this story, even after such a ridiculously long hiatus. You guys rock.:)


	9. Chapter 9

_After, seven weeks_

It's not until Kate's in the passenger seat of the Vic on the way to the warehouse that it hits her. She's not going be able to do this. She can't actually walk into the warehouse where Castle –

She's going to be sick.

Ten minutes ago she'd been sharing with Ryan that heady feeling of clues falling into place. There'd been _momentum_. Find the camera, do what's next. Take another step towards resolution, an explanation, something, _anything,_ for Castle.

A pit opens up in her chest as Kate really realizes what it is they are hoping to find. It hollows her out and makes it hard to breathe. No one's said it out loud, but if Bauchman hid a camera in the warehouse then he probably recorded at least some of what happened that day.

Castle's last minutes alive. The moment he was shot. The blood...

No one is talking. Esposito is staring straight ahead, his hands at precisely 10 and 2 on the steering wheel, his face grim. Kate can feel Ryan's worried stare boring into the back of her head, and the tense silence in the car is stretching tighter with every block. Kate spends the rest of the trip alternating between very deliberately blanking her mind and wishing there was some way to take one of the pills hidden in the inside pocket of her jacket without the boys noticing.

The ride lasts forever and is over way too fast. Esposito pulls to a stop outside the warehouse and is out of the car before Kate can unstick her legs from the seat.

"Stay in the car, Beckett." Esposito's tone brooks no argument and Kate has a frantic dissociative moment, a flash of memory, _stay in the car Castle, _before she nods from the passenger seat, concentrating too hard on not freaking out to actually form words.

If she'd told him to stay in the car that day, would it have made any difference?

Yes. No. It doesn't matter. He's still dead.

"This shouldn't take long," Ryan promises. He squeezes her shoulder before he climbs out of the backseat. Kate stares straight ahead, gripping the seat until her fingers are stiff, and tries not to think at all. It doesn't work, and she's caught in a haze between reality and memory.

_It's hot. Castle's futzing with the radio, changing the station so fast Kate can't recognize the songs. She's two seconds from grabbing his hand when he hits on a station and turns it up._

"_Ohh, that's crazy."_

_Kate shoves her hair back and holds it off her neck. She's sweaty, but the warm weight of his palm still feels good against her knee. "What's crazy?"_

"_I haven't heard "Wanted: Dead or Alive" on the radio in years until yesterday, and here it is again." Castle squints, holds up his other hand."Wait, this is "Blaze of Glory". Maybe that's what I heard. Which one is from _Young Guns_?"_

"_Uhhh," Kate shakes her head, her concentration rattled by his fingers taping out the rhythm against the inside of her upper thigh. "I don't –" _

_Castle interrupts with loud and exuberant singing. "Staring down a bullet, let me make my final stand….Shot dowwwwwwwn in a blaze of glory. Take me dowwwwn, but know the truth. I'm going ouuuut in a blaze of glory….."_

"_Castle, shhh, someone hears you, we're both going to be staring down a bullet." She's only teasing. There's no real danger here._

"_Sorry." Castle turns to her, his grin unrepentant. And adorable. "But I think we're safe. This place is deserted." He waggles his eyebrows. "Alone at last."_

_Kate barely bites back a smile and tries to be stern. "This is a stake out. You know the rules for stakeouts. And we were alone just this morning."_

"_That was hours ago, Kate. Hours and hours." His hand creeps a little higher and Kate can't help twisting in her seat. "Is no touching a stakeout rule? I don't think that's ever been clarified."_

"_It's an implied stakeout rule." God, her voice is already breathless and all he's done is run his hand over her - . She gasps and tilts her hips._

"_Hmmmm, that's what I thought." Castle shifts closer, his lips against the side of her neck, his hand moving up under her shirt, sliding along the skin of her lower abdomen. "A rule made to be broken –Damnit." He freezes, staring out the window._

_Kate turns and sees Councilman Bauchman moving furtively towards the warehouse, his head down. "Damnit," she echoes, and tries to ignore the sharp edge of desire skittering across her nerves. Later. They'll continue this later._

_Castle drops his head to her shoulder and huffs out a sigh. "Excellent timing, Bauchman. Thanks a lot."_

_Kate runs her hand over his hair one more time. "Come on. The sooner we arrest him, the sooner the mind numbing paperwork will be finished."_

"_True." Castle pulls back, and even in the heat of the day Kate feels a brief chill at the loss of his touch. She shivers a little. Castle frowns. "You okay?"_

"_Yeah. Someone just walked over my grave, I guess." He wrinkles his nose and Kate laughs as she pulls out her phone. "Just an expression, Mr. Master of Macabre. Just let me call this in and we'll go get this guy." _

"_That's right." Castle opens the passenger door and turns around to smile at her. "I hope he's ready to go down in a blaze of - _

"We found it."

Kate jerks, startled back to the present. Ryan is at the window, holding up a small hand-held video camera. She glances around wildly, swamped with stupid grief at finding herself alone in the car.

"Beckett? It was hidden the back of the warehouse, opposite the wall where Bauchman was shot." Ryan pauses, his eyes too kind, and Kate's throat constricts. "If it was set to record that day, it would've caught everything."

* * *

"You don't have to watch it." The quiet understanding in Ryan's voice almost makes her cry. "We can tell you…" He pauses. "We can tell you anything you don't already know."

Kate can't look at him. "Of course I have to watch it," she scrapes out. Her voice seems to come from somewhere else. She wants to send the boys home, afraid of what this will do to her, but a small corner of rationality knows this is a terrible idea, and that they won't leave anyway.

Her living room is bright, the mid-morning sun streaming through the blinds. It seems impossible that it's only been two hours since they left the precinct.

"I'll…" Kate chokes on the knot in her throat. "I'll, um, I'll be right back." She tries not to run. Once in her room and leans against the closed door, trying to marshal some sort of strength to do the impossible.

* * *

Kate leaves Ryan and Esposito in her living room for fifteen minutes. She spends three minutes digging a USB cable out of the back of her closet, and the other twelve in her bathroom, staving off a panic attack. Her hair is damp at the roots with perspiration and there are spots before her eyes, her stomach clenched with dread. What if there is nothing on the tape? But, _oh God_, what if there is?

Maybe Dr. Burke is right. Maybe it's better not to remember.

Kate reaches for the pills on the bedside table, her shaking hands knocking over a jumble of stuff; two months worth of random misplaced things and books, a to-be-read pile on indefinite pause, like everything else.

She reaches down to grab the bottle amid the scattered books. The one closest to her has flipped opened and is lying face up, opened to the dedication page.

_To the real Nikki Heat, with gratitude_.

_Naked Heat_. She remembers now. She'd been in the middle of reading them all again, had already reread _Heat Wave _right after she'd torn through _Frozen Heat_.

The real Nikki Heat. Kate isn't Nikki, not really. She's always believed that Nikki is a little stronger, a little tougher. A little bit invincible. Not better than Kate exactly, but without the secret tender places, the parts that are insecure and vulnerable. The weak spots that can destroy her if they take a direct hit.

If Nikki had a recording that could possibly show her the last minutes of Rook's life, could answer her questions, she would not be hiding in the bedroom. Nikki would have seen there was something wrong from the beginning.

Kate slowly stands up, leaving the books, the knick knacks and her pill bottle spread out across the floor. Castle had believed she was as strong as Nikki Heat. She can do this.

* * *

When she opens her bedroom door she finds Ryan and Esposito in a whispering huddle by her television. They both turn towards her, their faces twin masks of concern and indecision.

"Beckett." Ryan is shifting his weight back and forth, his hand in his hair. "Listen. You really don't….we don't think you should look at this." He holds up the camera.

Kate is already shaking her head. "No, I - "

Esposito starts towards her, his hand out for the USB cable. "At least let us watch it first, make sure – "

"No." Kate holds up her hand and Esposito stops, his face torn. He doesn't move as she steps past him and plugs the camera into the tv. "He'd watch it if it were me."

"You sure?" Esposito checks one last time.

Kate nods, her teeth clenched so hard her head hurts. Ryan steps up beside her while Esposito nods back, his eyes on hers in unshakable solidarity.

She presses play.

* * *

A/N - I think I made Jessie read this a gazillion times. Thanks Jessie!:)

A/N 2- "Blaze of Glory" is actually from _Young Guns II_ aka the-movie-with-every-single-young-male-star-from-the-late eighties/early nineties, and I'm not sure why, but I may or may not know the lyrics by heart.

A/N 3 - Thanks for reading! You guys are the best!:)


	10. Chapter 10

The camera caught everything.

At first there's almost 10 minutes of nothing but empty warehouse. Kate pushes fast forward, her fingers shaking, and then, abruptly, there they are. The blood leaves her head all at once as she and Castle appear, walking away from the camera. She has her gun trained on Bauchman, and Castle is behind her, less than an arm's length away.

Almost immediately all hell breaks loose. Bachman jerks back, hit by a bullet from an unseen gun. He slides down the wall, his hands empty, Castle still standing, as nearly simultaneously Kate-on-the-video drops bonelessly to the ground, Castle grabbing her arm.

Kate sinks to her living room floor, lightheaded, as the scene on TV becomes surreal. It's like a movie, men dressed like ninjas appearing from nowhere, dragging Castle away from her, turning him to the entrance, unwitting facing him directly at the camera.

There's a roaring in her ears. She's on her knees in front of the TV, the floor unsteady beneath her, gripping the edge of the table so she won't collapse.

She watches Castle's face as they shoot him, how he mostly seems surprised, even as he loses consciousness. She watches his blood spread across the floor, creeping towards her own out-flung hand.

As if from far away Kate hears Ryan calling her name. She senses Esposito moving up beside her right before the screen clicks to black, and with a rush and start she comes back to herself.

"What are you doing?" She reaches for the start button but Esposito grabs her wrist.

"Beckett, no, that's enough." Esposito is faintly green under his sudden pallor.

"We'll watch the rest," Ryan adds, and Kate turns at the break in his voice. His eyes are wet, and her heart thumps, hard, at how much they love her. At how much they loved Castle.

"No." She shakes her head, her words trapped, unable to explain that nothing is stopping her now. "Play the rest."

* * *

The picture on the screen has faded to static but Kate can't move.

She feels tilted, twisted, the very taste of the air different, as everything she thought she knew is blasted into bits, the debris settling around her in a new pattern, a new reality where Castle wasn't killed by a cornered and panicked suspect. A world where Castle was targeted, taken out.

"Holy shit." Ryan keeps swearing. "Holy, holy shit."

"Maybe…" Kate can barely scrape the words out. She's afraid to articulate the thought nudging at edge of her consciousness. It's an idea too dangerous even to think, because it can't really be true. "The men who shot him… they were trying to save him… maybe he wasn't…" Her throat sticks around the very impossibility.

"We don't know he's not dead," Esposito croaks out. Kate can't tell if he's talking to her or himself. "We just know he didn't die the way we thought."

"I know. I just…" Kate tastes salt along her lip and realizes she's crying. She absently pushes at the tears, and even the pads of her fingers against her check are too rough in this hard, glaring reality where someone took Castle from her on purpose.

Her vision is blurring, but it doesn't block the images of Castle falling to the ground, inches from her own prone body. Castle being surrounded by men in black, men who administer medical attention immediately, only to melt into thin air when she begins to move.

"I wasn't in a fugue state." The thought hits her with a cold shock of clarity. It was hard to see on the grainy footage, but she'd grabbed her neck right before she'd dropped to the floor.

Castle had half caught her, but one of the men in black jerked him away. She'd watched him try to hold on to her deadweight, her body heavy and unresponsive.

She was unconscious _before_ Castle was shot.

"I must have been drugged. I didn't just black out." _She hadn't blacked out._ Kate doubles over, her forehead to her knees, the relief hitting her so hard she can barely breathe. Her throat burns with a fresh surge of tears because maybe, _maybe,_ it isn't all her fault.

It isn't her fault that she doesn't remember the bullets tearing into Castle. It isn't her own hateful frailty that left Castle alone to pass out from pain and blood loss on that cold warehouse floor. She'd failed to stop him from being shot because someone had purposefully taken her out first.

Kate slowly sits up and pushes her hair off her face. The floor is hard against her knees and ankles, sharp points of pain that help to clear her mind, narrow her focus.

Castle would've loved this case, its mystery, the twists and turns, how the whole picture, the very landscape of the puzzle has altered.

Everything looks different when the perspective changes from grief to revenge.

* * *

"Okay, okay." Esposito is pacing back and forth in front of her couch. "We need to take this to Gates."

"No." Kate shakes her head, adamant.

"What?"

"Beckett…" Ryan sounds sick.

"She'll never let me keep the case."

"And that's a bad thing?" Esposito looks incredulous and Ryan is staring at her the way he did last spring, right before she forced him to choose between loyalty and her life. She knows what they're thinking, but this isn't like before. Except…

"I know you're thinking this is like my mother." Kate clenches her hands and closes her eyes to see a man in black spinning Castle around to take a bullet to the chest. She opens them again. "And maybe it is. But you know what? I wasn't wrong then, either. I was right, and look, I don't know what's going on." She tries to pull in air without her breath hitching. If only she can stop crying she might be able to convince them. "But this goes deep. We don't know who's involved, we need to keep this to ourselves."

Esposito shakes his head. "This doesn't make sense. Nothing on that tape makes any sense."

"They were after, Castle, Espo. The whole thing was a setup. They wanted us in that warehouse." It's so clear now, the inconsistencies, the lack of information, Kate doesn't understand how she didn't see this from the beginning.

"Why would they want you in the warehouse? I don't understand." Esposito sounds bewildered, lost, finally confronted with evidence he can't rationalize away. He grips her wrist, his fingers too tight. "Why would anyone want to kill Castle?"

Kate is silent, the truth suddenly breaking over her. So obvious.

This case is like her mother's. Just like her mother's. _Because it's still the same case_.

Her entire stomach is inverting, trying to turn itself inside out, and she can feel the sweat, cold and damp, on her neck and palms. The relief of seeing that there was nothing she could have done in the moment to save Castle is washed away by the realization that whole case comes back to her.

Why would anyone want to take Castle? There is no reason. No reason but one.

"Me. They took him to break me."

She's wrong. This is her fault.

* * *

"We don't know it's Bracken, Beckett." Esposito is leaning forward in the passenger seat, his seatbelt pulled taut, ready to leap over the armrest and take the wheel at her first sign of a breakdown.

Kate sits up straighter. She puts on her blinker and carefully executes a turn to the right, hand over hand. "Who else could it be? This whole setup, the obvious cover up. The Bauchman case is almost exactly like when Bracken set up the mayor. I can't believe I didn't see it before."

"There was nothing to see." Ryan sounds so anxious, afraid. Afraid of what she might do.

"We have to keep calm, we can't do anything crazy." Esposito huffs when Kate says nothing. "That means we're not confronting U.S. senators until we have more information."

Kate keeps her still-gritty eyes on the road, her knuckles white against the steering wheel. She can't debate this with Esposito right now. She has to concentrate on the next thing, the next step, and right now that is Carl the lying paramedic.

Carl, who texted Esposito fifteen minutes ago, changing the location of their meeting and moving it up two hours. Kate hustled everyone into the car without asking any questions, intent only on answers.

Esposito sighs, his eyes worried. "Look, we just have to talk to Carl, take it from there."

"I know that. That's what I'm doing."

"Then why can I practically hear you planning your interrogation of Bracken?" Kate doesn't answer and Esposito sighs again, runs his hand through his hair. "We'll look into him, I promise. But we have to be smart about this."

"I know that, too."

"We have no reason to think Castle's not dead." Esposito repeats.

Kate's knuckles turn white on the steering wheel. He's right. She knows he's right.

But.

Whoever those people are, they'd tried to save Castle. They'd shot him and then tried to save him. They hadn't wanted him dead, at least not right away.

It had all been a lie, a trick, but why? He hadn't been dead. Not yet.

Her breath is coming short, catching in her throat. Something is pressing against her ribs and Kate tries to stop it. She tries to fight it back, but it surges up anyway, swelling in her chest, tingling behind her eyes. Hope, hard and bright.

Disastrous hope.

* * *

"He's late." Kate checks her watch for the millionth time and peers out the window of the Crown Vic at the nearly deserted playground where they're supposed to meet Carl.

"Maybe he's already here. You want me to check?" Ryan moves to open the back door, his need to do something to help her almost palpable.

"No, man. We'll see him," Esposito mutters, his eyes roving the playground. He checks his own watch. "I don't like this. He changes the meeting place at the last minute and now he's ten minutes late? Something's not right."

Carl's text had changed the meeting place from a coffee shop in Sunset Park to this half-abandoned playground on the edge of a decaying neighborhood. Coming from Kate's apartment they'd barely made in time.

There were a few teenagers camped out on the rusted jungle gym, playing hooky. A minute ago a scruffy guy in his mid-twenties had meandered over to the broken bench toward the back and was just hanging out. He kept glancing over at the Crown Vic, obviously nervous but trying to be subtle. Kate's pretty sure they're interrupting his drug deal.

"There he is." Esposito points down the sidewalk. Carl is coming into view, skittishly looking in every direction at once and generally being the opposite of inconspicuous. Kate thinks she can see the sweat on his face from here. "Beckett –" Esposito starts.

But Kate barely hears him. She's already out of the car, barreling down the sidewalk. Carl sees her coming and stops, his hands in the air in an almost comical imitation of a stick-em up.

"Who hired you?"

"I don't know, I swear, all I ever got was a phone call. I never got a name."

"Not good enough, man." Esposito steps up beside them, in Carl's face, backing her up, but Kate lays a hand on his arm.

All at once everything seems hard, and bright, and calm. Kate forces herself to pull back, because she knows who's behind this, and Carl is her chance to prove it. She can do this. "Why did you want to talk to us, Carl?"

Carl looks everywhere but at them. "I'm nervous, man. I didn't sign up for this shit." He's breathing heavily, shifting his weight from foot to foot. "I don't know anything, I only talked to the guy who set it up. I swear I didn't even know the dude in the ambulance was Richard Castle it was until it was all over the news."

Esposito takes half a step back, wiping at his face. Carl's speaking so fast little bits of spittle are flying from his mouth, his eyes wide and rolling. "Right after it happened I got weird phone calls, texts, all warning me not to talk. But since you pulled me into the police station - and I mean, like, within the _hour _- I've been getting threats to my family, my mom." He turns in a circle, his eyes lingering on the kids, the drug dealer on the bench. "I think they're following me."

"Who is they?" Kate asks, but Carl ignores her. He swallows his spit and leans in closer.

"And then, right before I got here, I got this." He pulls his phone from his pocket and hands it to Kate. The screen shows a text message from 8 minutes ago_. Consider this a warning._

Kate frowns. "Consider what a warning?"

"I don't know, that's the whole message."

"Shit." Ryan's eyes fly to hers. "That's not good."

Something twists in her gut. This is all wrong, wrong, and they still don't have any answers. "But what did they want you to do? What happened that day in the ambulance?"

But Carl's not paying attention. He can't stand still, his head swiveling from side to side, sweat visible along his hairline despite the cold. "Hey, can we go inside or something? This place is giving me the creeps. They could be watching right now." He nervously eyes the guy on the bench.

Esposito lets out an exasperated snort. "You're the one who wanted to meet here."

Carl starts and stares at them directly for the first time. "You told me to meet you here. You sent me a text –"

Kate's stomach bottoms out as she and Esposito exchange a horrified look.

It's a set up.

"Get in the car." Kate grabs Carl and shoves him toward the Crown Vic. Esposito whirls around, his hand already on his weapon, while Ryan yanks open the back door of the car and pushes Carl inside.

The shots ring out immediately, three sharp reports, close and loud, cutting through the chill. Ryan jerks back, falls to his back on the sidewalk, his eyes wide.

"Get down!" Esposito shouts, already on the ground beside Ryan, shielding him with his own body.

Kate dives into the front seat of the car, her hip catching on the steering wheel, her ears ringing, her heart in her mouth, because she knows. She knows what she's going to see before she pulls up just enough to squint into the back of the car.

Carl is slumped, unmoving, the upholstery and windows splattered with blood and bits of his brain.

* * *

"Beckett? Beckett!"

Kate extricates herself from the uniformed officer who seems disturbingly blasé about what he is calling a drive-by shooting, and shoves her way through the police and medical personnel swarming the scene to reach Esposito, who is hovering over Ryan as he's strapped to the stretcher and loaded into the ambulance.

Ryan's unconscious, his skin is bleached to chalk, his only color the red of his blood covering his shoulder, his neck. Just like Castle –

Kate has to grab the side of the ambulance. "He was awake. I thought it was clean through the shoulder, I –"

"He's going to be fine." Esposito palms her shoulder, his voice low and fierce, daring her to disagree. "They knocked him out for the pain. I've called Jenny and she's meeting us there. Are you okay to follow us? Shit." He rubs his eyes, apparently remembering that her ride is covered in Carl. "Can you get a cab?"

Kate nods, her eyes fixed on Ryan, the pallor of his face, his still form. A few inches to the left and Ryan would be flat-lining right about now, just like she had. Like Castle –

No. She clenches her fists and shoves down the panic that's trying to choke her. "This has to stop. Bracken. I have to stop him."

"What?" Esposito swings around to face her. "No, Beckett, we don't know this was Bracken –"

"Stop saying that." The force of conviction steadies her voice, her nerves. "We do know."

The EMT sticks her head out and waves at Esposito. "We're ready."

"Promise me." Esposito has one foot in the back of the bus while he grips her upper arm. "Promise you won't go off alone and do something stupid. Promise you'll wait for me."

"Okay." Kate steps out of his hold and swipes at her eyes. "I promise. Just…stay with him, make sure…"

"He's going to be _fine_," Esposito repeats furiously. He pulls himself in the ambulance and stabs a finger at her. "You just _wait_."

Kate nods and watches while they close the doors and blip the lights to pull out into traffic. She stands on the sidewalk until they've gone four blocks and around a corner, turning out of sight.

Then she walks two blocks the other way and hails a cab, giving directions for Manhattan. The street address for the offices of the Senator from New York.

Some promises can't be kept.

* * *

.

* * *

A/N - Thanks to Laura and Jessie for beta-ing, but some stuff had to be reworked, so any errors are mine.:) Thanks as always for reading. You guys are the best.:)


	11. Chapter 11

Thanks to Laura and Jessie for reading and unraveling and fixing and listening to my all caps whining.

* * *

Chapter 11

* * *

_Left, left, right, left._

_Left, left, right, left._

The way out, the nurse said. Lying in the bed, Castle repeats the directions like a mantra, the key gripped so tightly in his palm it cuts into his skin.

He's been alone since the nurse was last here, hours and hours ago, maybe a whole day. Time has stretched out into infinity as he waits for something to happen, and every second his heart is in his mouth, his muscles tensed to run.

Over and over, Castle imagines Turk bursting in, demanding the key. His best case scenario has Turk taunting him, laughing that Castle could believe someone would just hand him the way out, as though it could possibly be that easy.

Worst case, Turk drags in the dead body of the nurse to prove that it's not going to be easy at all.

No. Castle takes a breath and forces himself to focus on shifting the key from his palm to his finger and thumb. It doesn't matter how improbable it is that someone might be trying to help him after all this time. It could be a joke, a trick, _or the absolute truth_, and it doesn't matter, because it's the only chance he's going to get. The only way to get to Kate.

And nothing has happened. Nothing, and Castle is alone with the key to freedom literally in his hand.

It takes him five tries to get the key into the stupid minuscule keyhole on the cuffs, all the while cursing his shaking hands and suddenly sausage-like fingers. Before he can turn it, the tiny metal piece slipping against his sweaty fingertips, there are footsteps in the hall.

Castle freezes, _please keep walking_, but the door rattles, _of fucking course,_ and he jerks back and attempts to lie still and not look like he was about to run for it. Difficult when his heart is pounding and he's pretty sure his face is shiny with sweat and _holy shit the key is still stuck in the cuffs._

The door flies opened so hard it smacks the wall.

"Time is running out, Mr. Castle." Turk strolls in, a detectable frisson of excitement crackling under his habitual calm demeanor. This can't be good.

Castle takes a slow breath, tries not to move his shackled arm or shift his eyes to his wrist or do anything to call attention to the key that is sticking out of the cuffs, suddenly massive and obvious. Time is running out indeed.

"Plans have changed." Turk quirks up one side of his mouth. "It turns out your services are no longer required."

Castle is abruptly lightheaded as all the blood exits his brain, because this is _so not good_. "What are you going to do to Kate?"

Turk is pacing back and forth. His steps are unhurried, but he's rhythmically slapping his hand against his thigh. "Oh, come now, Mr. Castle. Don't get all hypocritical on me and act like you care what happens to her. You had your chance to help."

Castle grits his teeth so he won't yank on the cuffs. "Help? To help you set her up, to plant false information so she'll go after Bracken and look crazy." His heart's beating so hard he's surprised Turk can't see it against his hospital gown. "She'd be discredited, lose her job. Bracken would go after her for defamation of character. I won't help you ruin her life."

"Mr. Castle." Turk abruptly stops pacing and looks him right in the eye. He's smiling. "You already have."

"What?" If he reaches over and turns the key, how many seconds of freedom before Turk subdues him? Three? Five?

Turk pulls the chair from the corner, the legs screeching against the floor. "Things have changed. It seems that it's occurred to Detective Beckett that there is something off about your death. Finally." There's a quick flash of triumph in his eyes.

Turk sits and leans back in the chair, his head tipped to the ceiling. "But no worries, nothing she can prove. She does have a history, doesn't she? Dark obsession with the loss of a loved one? Tinhatting? Killing herself searching for a why that just isn't there?"

The rage, the familiar impotent rage at the thought of Kate, lost and alone down the rabbit hole, seizes Castle so hard he can't draw a breath. "You fucking bastard," he chokes out. "You leave her alone. She's no threat to you." He clenches his fists. Two seconds later and he'd have had the cuffs opened. Two seconds later and he could be bloodying Turk's grin right now.

Turk laughs. They're destroying Kate and he's _laughing_. "You don't understand, Mr. Castle. I'm finished with this game. We've gotten what we wanted from you. Your death made Kate Beckett seem unstable, volatile and confused. We just need her to go after Bracken again. When she fails she will look obsessed. Again. No one will question what happens next."

Castle barely moves his wrist, testing the cuffs. "Next? But you said you wanted to know what she has on Bracken. That's why you can't kill her, she can take down Bracken."

"That's certainly the danger for Bracken." Turk smiles at him, all buddy-buddy. "I did like that idea, though. Giving her false information to go after Bracken. She's discredited and Bracken's exonerated. She can't go after him again, because she looks crazy and all the evidence looks false." Turk smiles wider and shrugs. "Too bad that was never actually our plan."

A wave a cold panic shivers through Castle as his stomach flips. "What?"

"And we don't need you anymore. Detective Beckett is on her way to see Bracken right now. To confront him about the… oddities surrounding your death."

Castle can't stop himself from jerking at that, his arms flexing. He has to get out _now_, get to Kate. There's a sudden give at his wrist as the movement of his arm and _an absolute fucking miracle _rotate the key the final half a millimeter and the cuff releases.

Holy shit. Castle freezes. Just like that he has a chance. Kate has a chance. He fixes his eyes on Turk, starts talking just to distract him. "No matter what, that kind of attention, that's going hurt Bracken. He's could lose his election bid. Your boss won't like that."

Turk cocks his head, and Castle feels his heart drop at the look on the man's face. Castle may be seconds from freedom, but it might already be too late.

"True, Mr. Castle. Senator Bracken won't like it." Turk _winks_, his eyes twinkling. "But who says Bracken's my boss?"

* * *

Kate stands in front of a desk in the antechamber of Bracken's office, her badge in the face of his administrative assistant. Linda, according to the nameplate on her desk. She's an attractive older woman with that pained expression people get when they have to find a way to be polite and still do their job. Or, in this case, stall a possibly deranged police officer.

She works for Bracken. She's probably used to rebuffing enraged individuals out for revenge.

"I'm sorry, Detective." The woman's eyes keep darting between the blood on Kate's shirt and the gun visible at her waist. "Senator Bracken is in a meeting and can't be interrupted. If you would like to wait…"

"No." No more standing by while everyone she loves is shot, casualties of this man's twisted ambition. Kate steps closer, the edge of the desk pressing into her thighs. "I'm not waiting. This is more important that whatever meeting he's taking, whatever scheme he's concocting." Kate reaches across the desk and shoves the phone towards the poor assistant. "You tell him Detective Kate Beckett is here, and he needs to see me right now or our deal is off."

The woman's eyes widen. "Of course. Of course, Detective Beckett." She punches a number into the phone, holds the receiver to her ear. "Detective Beckett is here…yes. Yes, I understand." She hangs up the phone and stands up. "He'll see you immediately, let me just…"

The inner office door opens, and a distinguished gentleman steps out, followed by Bracken, who shakes his hand, oozing smiles and charm, faking goodwill. Kate has to hold her breath and clench her fists to keep from striding up to him, slapping another scar across his face.

Bracken spots her as he turns to walk the man to the door. "Detective Beckett." He pauses for a moment, unblinking, before a different smile spreads across his face. "What a lovely surprise."

Kate pushes past the desk towards his office. "We need to talk, Senator."

"Of course." Bracken murmurs an apology to older gentleman and pats him on the shoulder before turning to her and extending his arm towards the doorway. "After you."

His office is all mahogany and leather, so falsely venerable and respectable that it turns Kate's stomach. The door snicks shut and Bracken slides around behind his desk. Kate automatically moves back, avoiding his proximity, his touch.

"What can I do for you?" Bracken sits and leans forward, his hands folded on his desk, his face the picture of concern. "I heard about Richard Castle. I'm so very sorry for your loss."

The rage presses against her chest, her throat. Kate forces back angry tears because she'll die before she cries in front of him, this man who's taken everything. "Spare me your condolences. We both know what happened here. And you're in violation of our agreement."

"Our agreement?" Bracken cocks his head, so innocent. Playing with her.

Kate forces steel into her voice. Betray no weakness. "The agreement that I'll keep what I know about you to myself as long as you don't come after me. Or anyone I love."

Bracken's smile remains fixed. "I've kept my end of our bargain, Detective. Here you are, safe and sound."

Kate feels a swell of fury at his lies. "The people I love aren't safe and sound. Senator."

There's a pause. Bracken narrows his eyes. "I don't know to whom you are referring. Perhaps you can explain?"

_Asshole_. Kate grits her teeth and forces herself to keep her hands away from her weapon at her waistband. Demanding answers at gunpoint won't help her. "Detective Ryan was shot 30 minutes ago while attempting to question a witness."

"I'm sorry to hear that." Bracken's face gives away nothing. "But surely that's an occupational hazard? I don't see what that has to do with me."

God, she hates him. "The witness was also shot. Assassinated."

Bracken straightens slowly, his brows knotting almost imperceptively . "And I'm to assume you believe this witness is in some way connected to me?" He smiles again, that sickening twist of his lips. "I'm sorry, Detective Beckett, you're wasting your time. I haven't had anyone assassinated recently."

"Except Richard Castle." Her voice is slow and steady, but somehow Kate's hand is on her weapon.

Bracken stills. He stares at her for several long moments, his eyes moving from her face to her gun. "You believe I had something to do with Mr. Castle's death?" He carefully leans back in his chair, his eyes never leaving hers. "It's true. You really are crazy with grief." Bracken shakes his head. "I guess you did love him."

"That's right," Kate grits out, pain and rage searing her throat. "I love him, and I know he didn't die like you want us to think. There's a tape. I saw what happened, the men in black who took him. I know Castle wasn't dead in that warehouse, not yet."

"What?"

Kate's fingers tighten, aching to pull back the safety. "You heard me. I know that he was alive when your men took him that day, and you're going to tell me everything that happened afterwards, you son of a bitch, or I'm taking you down right now. I - "

"Wait." Bracken is on his feet. "You're telling me that you have actual evidence that Mr. Castle was abducted? That he wasn't shot by Bauchman?" His face is leeched of color. "I need to see it right now." He grabs his coat, his veneer of smarm washed away by something almost like panic, almost like he really doesn't know what she's talking about. _But that makes no sense_.

"We need to leave. Now," Bracken says, rounding his desk. "If what you're saying is true we're both in danger, we –"

Bracken breaks off and freezes, his eyes wide, as behind her Kate hears the door click shut. She starts to turn and steps into a body at her back. An arm grabs at her waist and a hand clamps over her mouth just before the muzzle of her own gun is shoved against her temple.

* * *

"Bracken's not your boss?" Castle presses his wrist against the bed to keep the unlocked cuffs in place, his heart pounding so hard it's making him lightheaded. "But I thought – "

"Tsk, tsk." Turk shakes his head. "You know what happens when you assume."

Castle's starting to shake with the effort to be still. _What the fuck is going on_?

Turk leans forward, his eyes fixed on Castle. "You know my favorite part? It's all a bluff. All this time you've been agonizing, and we never needed you to do anything at all. You thought your resistance would keep us from destroying her, when killing you in front of Kate Beckett was all we really needed to set everything into motion."

Castle swallows against the bile in his throat, the adrenaline making him sick. _Kate_. "Set what into motion?"

Turk ignores his question, the smirk still fixed upon his face. "We only kept you alive so it would be impossible to confirm your death. Once Detective Beckett started to look, she would find one abnormality after another, a mystery. A cover up. Only it worked too well. Detective Beckett went crazier than we could have hoped, and it took her forever to start investigating. Now we're a little behind schedule, but we've adjusted. And her extreme and very obvious grief will make her actions that much more believable."

"Make what more believable?" Castle forces out, his heart in his throat. Because God help him, he thinks he knows.

"Detective Beckett shooting Senator Bracken in a grief-stricken rage, convinced that he's behind your death." Turk actually rubs his hands together. "It's going to be _so very tragic_."

Castle tries to breathe. She won't… "Kate won't do that."

Turk sits back, his eyes brows raised. "It's already done."

* * *

Kate can't breathe, can't move, can't get her mind in line with what's happening, how Bracken is standing with his hands raised in front of her while her gun is pointed at her head.

"Linda." Bracken sounds disgusted. "You traitorous bitch."

The fingers across Kate's mouth dig in a little deeper as Bracken's administrative assistant pulls Kate more tightly against her.

"I'm sorry, sir." The woman actually sounds sorry. "It isn't personal." She pulls the gun from Kate's temple and swings it in front of her, points it directly at the senator.

"Wait," Bracken starts, moving forward, reaching out, but before he's gone a step the room explodes with the sound of the firing gun. He stops, frozen, his eyes surprised. In the ringing, silent aftermath of the gunshot, Kate watches Bracken as he's suspended in space for an endless moment, before he crumples to the floor, his mouth still opened, a hole neatly between his eyes.

* * *

Cold washes through Castle's veins, wraps around his chest. "You're bluffing. Or wrong. Kate isn't a murderer."

Turk waves his hand in the air. "You're probably right. I'm betting that you are. But when we're finished it certainly will look like she killed him."

"Why? I don't…"

"Bracken's become a liability. He's sloppy, too many people know his secrets. This way we get rid of them both." Turk spreads his hands, smiles. "Then no one is left who knows anything."

"No." Castle forces himself to stay still, not to pull free and wrap his hands around Turk's neck. He has to know what they're going to do to Kate. "No one will believe she killed him; every officer in New York will be working to prove her innocence. And with what she knows about Bracken - "

"Oh, Mr. Castle. I think everyone will believe she could have killed Bracken. That's the beauty of it. After her instability over your death no one will question her actions in killing the Senator. Not when it's revealed that she believed he was behind your death."

"You can't do this." Castle hears the panic in his voice, knows he starting to lose it.

Turk laughs out loud. "But we can. We killed you, didn't we? Everyone believed that. Guess what else they'll believe?" His eyes are almost glittering with demented delight. "Detective Beckett's guilt when she realizes what she's done. How she won't be able to live with that guilt."

Oh God. Castle tries to pull in a breath as his stomach inverts and everything is suddenly hard and bright and clear. Kate's out of time.

Turk is still talking, like a villain from a Saturday morning cartoon. "This can go two ways, Mr. Castle. Either Detective Beckett will be arrested for the murder of Senator Bracken and, overcome with guilt at betraying everything she believes in, she'll tragically take her own life before she's even had a chance to speak to a lawyer. Or she'll run. There will be a manhunt, it will be all over the news. Her tragic story of grief-driven vengeance will be everywhere, and it will surprise no one when the whole thing ends with her suicide."

Hopeless fury crashes over him as Castle pictures it, Kate murdered, her lifeless body left alone on a cold cell floor or a dark street, betrayed by another cop. How deep does this go?

"In fact." Turk pulls out his phone. "I need to get in touch with my guys with instructions." He tilts his head, his expression thoughtful. "What do you think, Mr. Castle? If Kate Beckett is stabbed to death in an alley - oh, excuse me – if she slits her wrists and bleeds out in an alley, will it be tragically full circle, or over-the-top? I can't decide."

Something in Castle breaks. White explodes behind his eyes as he surges off the bed and slams into Turk. The hand with the cuffs comes down again and again until Turk is a broken, bloodied mess on the floor.

He's finally shut the fuck up.

* * *

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A/N - Okay, last week I told Tumblr I would update on Wednesday, and this** is** actually a Wednesday, so I think I should get partial credit, lol

Thanks again and always to everyone for reading and sticking with this. :)


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